 of my hopes

was, permission to live single, rather than give my hand to the man I detest. But now, Sophia, I am afraid that permission alone would not content me. Yet even that is not yet granted.
I every day expect to be obliged to return home, in spite of all my aunt's efforts to detain me: the hated time draws near, when my tormentor is again to be in our neighbourhood, which will I doubt prove the last of my liberty, as they will certainly recall me; then farewell hope! Farewell happiness! And farewell my too amiable Sommerville.
The subject has quite disconcerted me; Sophia, I must bid you adieu; dearly, I I fear, shall I pay for the few weeks happiness I have enjoyed since I came here. Alas, alas! How little do we know what is likely to promote our felicity; to avoid one kind of misery, have I not foolishly plunged myself into another; which may, perhaps, prove as fatal to my peace?—Adieu, once more.
My dear Sophia,
EMILY HERBERT.

Lord Sommerville to Charles Dalton, Esq
Colchester.
I Plead guilty, Charles, so pray let me have your pardon; yet is it so very wonderful I should have been a little negligent, when you consider the nature of the business I am engaged in? To get fairly quit of one mistress, and to gain the heart of another; no tristing affair you must confess, and what none but a fellow of my spirit, I will venture any bet, could have so happily accomplished in so short a time.
I told you, in my last, I believe, of being introduced to Mrs. Grenville, and of course to her adorable niece, the lovely Emily: this I feared was not the most difficult part of the undertaking; how to appease the apprehended wrath of my fair dowager, appeared to me infinitely more so.

But judge, if you can, of my astonishment, when on my attempting to make a blundering kind of defence, for a conduct my conscience told me deserved her indignation; she very coolly and calmly acquitted me of all blame; said the inconstancy of men never in the least surprised her: she was sorry my passion had been of so very short a date; her's, she confessed, might have held out some time longer, though that it would have come to end as mine had done, she had not a doubt; was too generous to blame me for a fault which nature had intailed upon every son and daughter of Adam;
