The next time that Mr. and Mrs. Campbell came to dine with their kind friend, she recollected the promise she had given Anna of relating what had passed during her stay from Rosewood.

"I think it but right to relate it," said she, "lest from what has at various times escaped me you may have formed a wrong idea, and think that I was not so happy in the married state, as my regard for Mr. Meridith's memory would otherwise evince.

"You remember, Mr. Campbell, when I left your house, I was not more than six years old; happy in having lived with you, and wishing for no other home. I loved my father, for he was very good to me, but I had rather see him at your house than his own, for there I had no one to play with me, or be my companion. When I dined with him, which you know was not very often, it was generally after he had been fatigued with a long ride in the morning; and when he had loaded my plate with every thing he called nice, and what he thought I should like, and allowed me as much fruit after dinner as I could eat, and gave me one or two glasses of wine to help my digestion (and truly I needed something for that purpose, as I never rose from the table without a violent head-ach), he would drink himself five or six times that quantity, and then fall asleep; and I was ready to follow his example: for not daring to open the door, lest I should awake him, I had no other amusement than creeping to the window, and there, with my eyes half shut, and my head and stomach violently oppressed, from the quantity I had eaten, I used to watch the coming of somebody to fetch me home; and glad I was to wake the next morning free from the head-ach, and without the expectation of going again to my father's.

"You know how differently the days passed at the farm, where I ate no more than was necessary for me, and I met with attention from all the servants and labourers, because I was the Squire's daughter; and, except the time your good mother took to teach me my letters and to spell a little, with the use of a needle and thread, I was allowed to play the rest of the day with Anna, whom I loved as a sister; and when you and Edward were at home, you always joined our party. Thus were my youngest days spent, and often have I looked back to them in far different scenes.

"At length a sister of my father's, who had married Sir Robert Meridith, and had no child of her own, proposed my living with them, saying that I should be quite a rustic if I remained any longer at Rosewood; and with some reluctance, as I have been told, my father consented. My aunt was much older than her husband, and he paid her but little attention; her fortune had been his chief inducement to marry, and of this he made ample use, though what was settled on herself he could not touch. She was proud and haughty, and continually reproved me for talking so much of the farm and your family, whom, she said, I ought to forget entirely; but this I thought I never could do.

"I remained a twelvemonth with her, at their house in Leicestershire, during which time my father came twice to see me; and being told by my aunt that I was already much improved, and only wanted education to make me what I ought to be, as his daughter and the heiress of Rosewood, he affected to be satisfied, and told her he left my education entirely to her. "Yet," said he, "I think my dear little Maria don't look so brisk and lively as when she was at the farm." I took this opportunity of inquiring for the friends I had left there; but he could not tell me half I wished to know, as how Anna was, and whether she went to school, and if Edward and you were grown; he said, you were all well, and grown very much, but as for any thing else he had not inquired. I sent you all many kind remembrances, and would have added some of my playthings for Anna, but as he travelled on horseback, neither himself or his servant could be incumbered with them.

"After this time my aunt went to London, and took me with her. My uncle had been there for many months; and his behaviour to my aunt after our arrival was still less attentive than in the country. He had his acquaintance, and she hers; a few old ladies like herself, with whom she formed card parties, and spent her evenings; while I was sent to what was called a very good school, and learnt every thing that was taught in it; and when I say this, my dear friends, perhaps you will not imagine it was much more than was good. I learnt from the masters who attended those accomplishments which are regularly introduced into schools; from the governess, all that feigned politeness, which teaches us to appear glad to see a person when we are not so; to tell them they look well, when their appearance is just the contrary; to acknowledge obligations where I felt none; and even to tell untruths rather than be uncivil, or say what would make my hearers think I wanted politeness. I learnt from the rest of the ladies, and some of the teachers, how to deceive our governess, and to make her think we had learnt our lessons when we had not; and these instructions, I am sorry to say, came very easy to me, though those from my masters were hard.

"Yet I often wished myself at the farm again, or at Rosewood, where I had nobody I desired to deceive, and scarcely knew what deceit was; but it was not required there, while here it was in daily requisition: for I had always some fault of my schoolfellows, if not of my own, to hide; and though from them I learnt to laugh at my aunt's finical ways, as they used to call them, I was obliged to put on all the courtesy and feigned politeness my governess taught me, whenever she came to see me.

"My father could never be brought to visit me in London, for he said he hated the smoke of it, and would by no means put himself in sight of a ladies' boarding-school, who would laugh at the manners of a fox-hunter, and teach his daughter to despise him. But when in the summer vacations I accompanied my aunt into Leicestershire, he would visit us for a day or two, and was evidently pleased when my aunt told him I was wonderfully improved, and knew as much as any young lady of my age. 'Well, well, I am no judge,' said he, 'but I hope she will make a good woman, and not disgrace her mother's memory. Ah! she was a woman, Lady Meridith, which is not to be met with in these days.'

"'But have you forgot your old friends, the Campbells?' said he to me.

"'No, indeed, papa,' I replied, their kindness rushing on my mind, 'and I hope I never shall;' and my inquiries were renewed after them and their family, without dissimulation.

"He told me that your father and mother were grown very old, and that you and Edward were nice boys, with every promise of making as good men as your father was. From my pocket allowance I was enabled to send my good old nurse some token of my remembrance, as my father said he would not wish me to forget either her or her children.

"'They will be her tenants by and bye,' said he to my aunt, 'and then what sort of figure will she make if she has forgotten them?'

"I was then about eleven years old, and I remained at this school till I was fifteen. My father died, as you know, very suddenly, and I was not apprized of his illness till he was no longer in this world. I was then thirteen, and was at first very much hurt, as his strong attachment to me, though singularly expressed, had never suffered him to see a fault in any thing I said or did; and I was sure to meet with indulgence from him, whenever I needed it. He appeared to have been doubly kind to me after I had lost him, but the new mourning I now appeared in, and the increased consequence I gained in the school, and with my aunt, on being the heiress of Rosewood and Coombdale, both my father's estates, made me soon forget it; and in two years afterwards I left the school highly accomplished, as my aunt's flattering friends told her (in my hearing), both in mind and person; and my vanity led me to think they told her true, though from the many lessons I had taken of dissimulation, I ought to have known the value of their commendations.

"I was now to be introduced to the world, but who was to introduce me was the question. My aunt was too old, and devoted to the card-table and her little coterie, to attend me to balls, routs, and dinner parties. Sir Robert had now given up even the appearance of civility to his wife, and lived in a distant county with another woman: but there was the widow of a brother of Sir Robert's, whom I had occasionally visited with my aunt, whose circle of acquaintance was much larger, and very different from hers. My aunt went round to about a dozen houses, while Mrs. Meridith visited all who lived at the west end of the town, and was intimate with but a very few: to her therefore I was consigned to see the world, which, in the meaning they attach to it, is to dance at several balls, dine at different houses, yet mostly meet the same company; and be able to speak of the merits and demerits of the principal performers at both theatres, and at the opera house; yet in this I was to be careful not to deviate from the general opinion, lest I should be called singular, and positively to know nothing. A few noblemen's ladies, or their titled daughters, might venture to differ in their likes and dislikes; but such an avowal would not do for me, who was only a commoner."

Mr. Campbell smiled at these distinctions, and began to hope the recital of their friend would not cost her all the anguish he had apprehended, since she could so cheerfully speak of her introduction to them.

Anna laughed, and said, "I hope I shall never be introduced to the world, for I should make a terrible figure in it; I have never been to boarding-school, you know, Mamma."

"True, my dear," returned Mrs. Meridith, "but the lessons you allude to are easily learnt without going there. I found them daily practised in the society I was in, and yet Mrs. Meridith was what was called an amiable woman, and, for so young a widow, remarkably strict in her conduct. She had one son, whom I had not yet seen, as he was then at college; but after I was so much at his mother's (for the evening parties to which I constantly accompanied her were so much later than my aunt's, that she allowed me to take up my residence there when we were in town,) he came home at the vacations, and I was introduced to him; and this Mr. Meridith, you will readily suppose, was afterwards my husband. But as my marriage will lead me into far different scenes, I shall, if you please, defer them till some other evening. You must be as tired of hearing as I am of relating those circumstances which,—however new they may be to you, are old and stale to me; and I am sick of what is called a knowledge of the world."

"And so, dear Madam, should I," replied Mr. Campbell; "but I cannot help acknowledging that we have too much of it in our little village, though in a humbler way. Human nature is the same every where, and a deceitful heart the characteristic which the word of God has given to man; we need not, therefore, go to London, or the great world, to find it out, unless our eyes are shut to what is going on within ourselves."

Supper was then ordered, and Mr. Campbell with great pleasure told Mrs. Meridith the alteration her last conversation with farmer Ward had made in his conduct towards himself.

"He has told me all," said he, "and with that ingenuousness, which I fear is not to be met with in the circles you have described to us, acknowledged himself wrong."

"In that respect," said Mrs. Meridith, "people belonging to less polished society have the advantage, for they are not ashamed to own themselves mistaken when they really feel they are so; while more polite ones never will."