The novels of Charles Brockden Brown, consisting of Wieland;or, The transformation. Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the year 1793. Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a sleep-walker. Jane Talbot. Ormond; or, The secret witness. Clara Howard; or, The enthusiasm of love. With a memoir of the author.

204 JANE TALBOT.
eagerness, and her eye, frequently, when my friend's eloquence was most affecting, appealed to me. It sometimes
conveyed a meaning far more powerful than her brother's
lips, and expressed at once the strongest conviction of the
truth of his words, and the most fervent desire that they
might convince me. Her natural modesty, joined, no
doubt, to her disesteem of my character, prevented her
from mixing in discourse.
She greeted me at this meeting with a frankness which
I did not expect. A disposition to converse, and attentiveness to the few words that I had occasion to say, were
very evident. I was just then in the most dejected and
forlorn state imaginable. My heart panted for some
friendly bosom, into which I might pour my cares. I
had reason to esteem the purity, sweetness, and amiable
qualities of this good girl. Her aversion to me naturally
flowed from these qualities, while an abatement of that
aversion was flattering to me,'as' the triumph of feeling
over judgment.
I should have left her at the door of her lodgings, but
she besought me to go in so earnestly, that my facility,
rather than my inclination, complied. She saw that I was
absent and disturbed. I never read compassion and (shall
I say?) good-will in any eye more distinctly than in hers.
The conversation for a time was vague and trite. Insensibly, the scenes lately witnessed were recalled, not
without many a half-stifled sigh and ill-disguised tear on
her part. Some arrangements as to the letters and papers
of her brother were suggested. I expressed a'wish to
have my letters restored to me; I alluded to those letters,
written in the sanguine insolence of youth and with the
dogmatic rage upon me, that have done me so much mischief with Mrs. Fielder. I had not thought of them
before; but now it occurred to me that they might as
well be destroyed.
This insensibly led the conversation into more interesting topics. I could not suppress my regret that I had
ever written some things in those letters, and informed
her that my view in taking them back was to doom them
to that oblivion from which it would have been happy for
me if they never had been called.