Hadwin was the conscientious member of a sect which forbade the marriage of its votaries with those of a different communion.

I had been trained in an opposite creed, and imagined it impossible that I should ever become a proselyte to Quakerism.

It only remained for me to feign conversion, or to root out the opinions of my friend and win her consent to a secret marriage.
Whether hypocrisy was eligible was no subject of deliberation.

If the possession of all that ambition can conceive were added to the transports of union with Eliza Hadwin, and offered as the price of dissimulation, it would have been instantly rejected.

My external goods were not abundant nor numerous, but the consciousness of rectitude was mine; and, in competition with this, the luxury of the heart and of the senses, the gratifications of boundless ambition and inexhaustible wealth, were contemptible and frivolous.
The conquest of Eliza's errors was easy; but to introduce discord and sorrow into this family was an act of the utmost ingratitude and profligacy.