You were a creature of imagination, and yet as truly a New England girl as any with whom you grew up in your native village.

If there were one person in the world whose native rectitude of thought, and something deeper, more reliable, than thought, I would have trusted against all the arts of a priesthood,--whose taste alone, so exquisite and sincere that it rose to be a moral virtue, I would have rested upon as a sufficient safeguard,--it was yourself!" "I am conscious of no such high and delicate qualities as you allow me," answered Hilda.

"But what have I done that a girl of New England birth and culture, with the right sense that her mother taught her, and the conscience that she developed in her, should not do ?" "Hilda, I saw you at the confessional!" said Kenyon.
"Ah well, my dear friend," replied Hilda, casting down her eyes, and looking somewhat confused, yet not ashamed, "you must try to forgive me for that,--if you deem it wrong, because it has saved my reason, and made me very happy.

Had you been here yesterday, I would have confessed to you." "Would to Heaven I had!" ejaculated Kenyon.
"I think," Hilda resumed, "I shall never go to the confessional again; for there can scarcely come such a sore trial twice in my life.

If I had been a wiser girl, a stronger, and a more sensible, very likely I might not have gone to the confessional at all.