 that sweet interval in amusing my mind with lighter topics, while he arranged his future plans; but finding I still appeared calm, he ventured at last to unfold to me the mighty designs which floated in his imagination. "Inexorably opposing choice to fate, my dearest Ellinor,

said he, never from the moment I first beheld you, have I formed a project in which you were not a sharer; this I am about to unfold has been for years the child of my dotage—collect yourself, listen without wonder, and, if possible, approve it: from the moment I knew the base arts that must have been made use of to separate us, I clearly comprehended we should never unite with the consent of Elizabeth; but, however indebted to her partial distinction, it was a point in which even she could not controul me; it is not the posts or advantages I derive from her favor, on which my soul values itself; elevated on a more solid foundation, it has taken every road to glory, and I may proudly say, given a grace to dotage; yet as that dotage, however unbecoming her years and her rank, has been uniform and generous, I have sworn to yield Elizabeth, to the latest moment of her life, every homage but that of the heart; and sacrifice to my fealty all but my happiness.—It is hard to reconcile duties

and inclinations so entirely opposite, yet I think you will own I have done so.
To a blind partiality for me, and her own egregious self-love, the Queen ignobly sacrificed your youth, your hopes, your happiness; but alas, she forgot in so doing, that she would only make them more perfectly mine—without any consideration for the husband she had given you, a wretch I could at any time look into insignificance, I studied solely how to extricate you from a bondage not more insupportable to you than myself.—Among a thousand other projects, I resolved to apprize the King of Scots of your existence and situation, soliciting from his fraternal regard a safe asylum, and that peace and protection my youth and circumstances would not allow me to offer you. I found means to convey to his knowledge your whole melancholy story—but how shall I declare to you his ungenerous conduct? Fool that I was to think the man who could tamely submit to the murder of his mother, would be interested by any other tye! Far from

exerting himself to rescue the dear unhappy sister I conjured him to compassionate, he affected to disbelieve the story of his mother's marriage with the Duke of Norfolk; though the Countess
