 with indignation;
preserve me from falling into the snares of a libertine! I hope my own discretion, without any aid from him, was sufficient to guard me against any snares that a libertine could lay for me.

"I hope so too," said Mrs. Willis.
Henrietta blushed a little at this expression, which seemed, she thought, to imply a doubt, but would not interrupt Mrs. Willis again.

I told you that this gentleman was very artful,
continued the good woman,
as you will be convinced by the story he told.

"You must know," said he to me, looking extremely wise, and lowering his voice,
that when I waited upon miss Courteney at the lodgings she had taken after she left her aunt, I observed a fine gay young man there, who followed me when I went out, and looked at me in a manner that shewed great curiosity and attention. It came into my head that this might be the spark of whom miss Courteney's aunt was apprehensive: I discovered that he lodged in the house with the young lady; and this circumstance I liked by no means. I resolved to remove her immediately, and place her with you: she so readily consented to my proposal that I doubted whether I had not been extremely mistaken in my conjectures concerning this young gentleman; but a day or two after she was settled with you, my spark came to enquire for her at my house: now it was plain that miss Courteney held some correspondence with him, otherwise he could not have known where to come after her.


I happened not to be at home, and the servants told him, that no such person was

there. He came several times, and was always answered in the same manner. His enquiries at length reached the ears of my wife; she desired he might be shewn up to her apartment when he came next; and it was from him that she learned miss Courteney was under my care.


To one of her temper it was enough to know that I had the management of a lady's affairs, to make her suspect that I had a more than ordinary interest in the lady herself. But she concealed her thoughts from me: and I, who was wholly ignorant that this gentleman had seen my wife, was only concerned at the connexion there seemed to be between miss Courteney and him; and therefore fixed upon that stratagem, to remove her out of his reach without giving her any suspicions of the cause.


I have since enquired about the gentleman; and I hear that he is a man
