 passions. You were presented to his eyes in early youth, a finished pattern of beau∣ty, endued with royalty; in the first ten∣der bloom of a newly awakened love. Uniting thus in your own person the strongest powers of charming, with such as were peculiarly congenial to the heart you wished to win, it laid itself at your feet. Oh woful moment when it did so, as it entailed upon you all the miseries of a mutual passion, without half its enjoy∣ments! Alas, Matilda, had you really been adored—yet what could that have done, more than to severely aggravate all you was born to suffer? and as the ap∣parent passion of Lord Leicester had to you the charms of reality, I am to blame perhaps thus to represent it: but the sea∣son of dissimulation is past, and my tor∣tured heart will utter nothing but truth. So fixed was my opinion of his character, that though there was a moment of my

life, when my fate seemed wholly in Lord Leicester's hands, I could not then enough esteem him to venture his decision. Yet still a tender pity for your unmerited and everlasting passion should have suppressed this (in your mind) harsh judgment, but that, I once more repeat, my own actions must ever then have appeared eccentric and enigmatical.
How deeply both father Anthony and I regretted the imprudence which intro∣duced into our solitary asylum so danger∣ous a visitor, it were needless now to repeat. Prudence was for once on the side of pas∣sion, and your fate was by the will of your only remaining guardian, for ever united with that of your lover, I soon found it vain to oppose the ascendency he had gained in your affections; and as my own were yet unoccupied, I looked no far∣ther than the present moment; and followed you to Kenilworth Castle without repin∣ing. Nevertheless I admired the delusi∣ons of love, which in a moment recon∣ciled you to a situation apparently so ob∣scure and abject; and still more that total

blindness to your own exquisite perfection, which could make you fancy that low state would ever appear to observing spectators your natural one. What then must be my astonishment to see Lord Leicester's love impose such humiliations, on an ob∣ject nature and fortune had placed so far above him, and meanly content himself with monopolized indulgences.
Scarce were we alone, when the pre∣sumption of that wretch Williams filled both of us with a terror which required an immediate remedy. Every faculty of my soul revolted against the abject com∣pliances your entreaties exacted from me; but even those only served to strengthen the contempt which began to predomi∣nate in it. Lord
