Perhaps I might have been deemed fastidious, but have never been able to lay aside my creed.
I had still a deeper reason for avoiding serious advances. My mind was made up never to leave my parents. I felt that their absorbing love could never be repaid by the longest life-service, and that the responsibility of an only child, their sole prop and solace, would be strictly regarded by Him who readeth the heart. I had seen aged people surrounded by indifferent persons, who considered their care a burden, and could not endure the thought that my tender parents, who were without near relatives, should be thrown upon the fluctuating kindness of hirelings and strangers. To me, my father already seemed aged, though scarcely sixty; and I said, in my musing hours, Shall he, who never denied me aught, or spoke to me otherwise than in love-tones, stretch forth his hands in their weakness, "and find none to gird him"?
So my resolution was taken solemnly, and, as I supposed, irrevocably. The loved objects for whose sake it was adopted knew nothing of it. They would not have required such a pledge, nor, perhaps, accepted it. My mother would have been pleased, I fancy, to have seen some reciprocity on my part on particular occasions. She was not without ambition, and would have enjoyed seeing her darling's lot in life uplifted and made permanent. She often rallied me on my indifference to various fascinations, ascribing it to the love of
