"'Can you indeed forgive me?' she at length said; 'my strange,
blind, wayward folly?'

"'Let us be friends as we were, Mrs.----,' I replied, 'and let this
hour be forgotten, or only remembered as a seal to our friendship.'

"From that day, Louisa, there has been no jarring string in our
friendly intercourse. Mrs.----really felt aggrieved; she thought
that she perceived in my conduct all that she had alleged, and it
wounded her to the quick. But the earnest sincerity with which I
sought her out and persisted in seeing her, convinced her that she
had altogether misunderstood the import of my manner, which, under
the peculiar state of her feelings, put on a false appearance."

"Well, Mrs. Appleton," Louisa said with a deep inspiration, as that
lady ceased speaking, "I cannot say that I think you did wrong:
indeed, I feel that you were right; but I cannot act from such
unselfish motives; it is not in me."

"But you can compel yourself to do right, Louisa, even where there
is no genuine good impulse prompting to correct actions. It is by
our thus compelling ourselves, and struggling against the activity
of a wrong motive, that a right one is formed. If I had consulted
only my feelings, and had suffered only offended self-love to speak,
I should never have persevered in seeing my friend; to this day
there would have been a gulf between us."

"Still, it seems to me that we ought not, as a general thing, to
humour persons in these idle whims; it only confirms them in habits
of mind that make them sources of perpetual annoyance to their