ments his pride, his self-love, all melted away, and he felt the value, the surpassing excellence of the blessing he had forfeited. He pressed the hand Jane had given him, to his lips fervently, "Oh, Jane," he said, "you are an angel; forget my follies, and think of me with kindness."
"I shall remember nothing of the past," she said, with a look that had 'less of earth in it than heaven,' "but your goodness to me—God bless you, Edward; God bless you," she repeated, and they separatedfor ever!
For a few hours Erskine thought only of the irreparable loss of Jane's affections. Every pure, every virtuous feeling he possessed, joined in a clamorous tribute to her excellence, and in a sentence of self-condemnation that could not be silenced. But Edward was habitually under the dominion of self-love, and every other emotion soon gave place to the dread of being looked upon as a rejected man. He had not courage to risk the laugh of his associates, or what would be much more trying, their affected pity; and to escape it all, he ordered his servant to pack his clothes, and make the necessary preparations for leaving the village in the morning, in the mail-stage for New-York. He was urged to this step too, by another motive, arising from a disagreeable affair in which he had been engaged—the affair which had induced Mr. Lloyd to make a second attempt to withdraw him from his vicious associates. At a recent meeting of the club, the younger Woodhull had introduced a gentleman who pretended to
