: and, in a short time, their confidence was unreserved, and their friendship appeared to be inviolable.
Mrs. Boothby had now the satisfaction of pouring the tale of her distresses into the ear of sympathy and friendship. Her story was melancholy, but not uncommon; the wreck of her husband's affairs by a mind too enlarged for his fortune, and an indulgence of inclinations laudable in their kind, but faulty in relation to the circumstances of their owner.

In the history of her young friend's life, there were but few incidents to communicate in return. She could only say, that she remembered herself, from her infancy, an orphan, under the care of sir Thomas Sindall and his aunt; that she had lived with them in a state of quiet and simplicity, without having seen much of the world, or wishing to see it. She had but one secret to disclose in earnest of her friendship: it faltered for some time on her lips; at last she ventured to let Mrs. Boothby know it — her attachment to Bolton.
From this intelligence the other was led to an enquiry into the situation of that young gentleman. She heard the particulars I have formerly related, with an emotion not suited to the feelings of Miss Sindall; and the sincerity of her friendship declared the fears which her prudence suggested▪
She reminded Lucy of the dangers to which youth and inexperience are exposed, by the sudden acquisition of riches; she set forth the many disadvantages of early independance, and hinted the inconstancy of attachments, formed in the period of romantic enthusiasm, in the scenes of rural simplicity, which are afterwards to be tried by the maxims of the world, amidst the society of the gay, the thoughtless, and the dissipated.
From all this followed conclusions, which it was as difficult as disagreeable for the heart of Lucy to form: it could not untwist those tender ties which linked it to Bolton; but it began to tremble for itself and him.

FROM the particulars of her own story, and of Bolton's, Mrs. Boothby drew one conclusion common to both; to wit, the goodness of sir Thomas Sindall. This indeed, a laudable gratitude had so much impressed on her mind, that the praises she frequently bestowed on him, even in his own presence, would have favored of adulation to one, who had not known the debt which this lady owed to his beneficence.
Lucy, to whom she would often repeat her eulogium of the baronet, was ready enough to own the obligations herself had received, and to join her acknowlegements to those of
