 never seen, owing to her having accompanied her father to the Court of Turin, where he resided in a public character, and from which place she was but just returned.
Miss Marsdon was uncommonly beautiful; and her manners and address, though highly cultivated, preserved an interesting simplicity which rendered her perfectly irresistible: her conversation, refined by an admirable understanding, embellished by education, and polished by an early introduction into the most

polite company abroad, possessed an ease and delicacy of good breeding almost as striking, at first sight, as the charms of her figure.—I felt the full force of both, and was conquered at once. With the blind impetuosity which marked my character, instead of exerting my utmost efforts to resist and avoid a temptation I found too insinuating, I gave way to this seducing passion, and shut my eyes on its unhappy consequences, so fraught with misery, remorse, and guilt. It was then that I cursed my folly, and that infatuation which had before guided me. Ever violent and untractable, I was almost driven to despair at the recollection of the weakness which had placed a bar so insuperable between me and my wishes. But there soon arose in my breast a ray of hope; the production of ungoverned passions, selfishness and treachery, which first suggested an action that has thrown the gloom of the

bitterest self-reproach on all the succeeding years of my life.
The lovely Miss Marsdon, an only child, and heiress to an immense fortune, possessed a considerable estate which she had inherited from her mother, and which lay contiguous to Belmont Castle. This circumstance, though trivial in itself, had induced my father often to express his wishes that a marriage between the young lady and myself might take place. Her absence had hitherto entirely frustated this plan, and given birth to other schemes; but her unexpected return at this juncture made him directly renew the old topic of matrimony, to which, hitherto, I had never been prevailed on to listen. Far from being averse to this match, he said he saw with pleasure it was an union into which I would enter with avidity; and that as the young lady herself seemed, if he might judge from appearances, to receive my attentions

with all the modest approbation I could wish, he thought the next step was to apply to his old friend Lord Embdon for his sanction and consent.
The mention of such a transaction made my blood run cold, and I received it with an embarrassment which not only astonished but extremely displeased my father; though, at the very moment that I half declined what my
