 hastily indulged.

THOUGH the thoughts of Annesly's future situation could not but be distressful to his sister and him, yet the deliverance from greater evils which they had experienced, served to enlighten the prospect of those they feared. His father, whose consolation always attended the calamity he could neither prevent nor cure, exhorted his son (in an answer to the account his sister and he had transmitted him of the events contained in the preceding chapter) to have a proper sense of the mercy of his God and his country, and to bear what was a mitigation of his punishment, with a fortitude and resignation becoming the subject of both.
The same letter informed his children, that though he was not well enough recovered to be able to travel, yet he was gaining ground on his distemper, and hoped, as the season advanced, to get the better of it altogether. He sent that blessing to his son which he was prevented from bestowing personally, with a credit for any sum which he might have occasion for against his approaching departure.
His children received additional comfort from the good accounts of their father, which this letter contained; and even in Annesly's

prison, there were some intervals in which they forg•t the fears of parting, and indulged themselves in temporary happiness.
It was during one of these, that Sindall observed to Harriet, how little she possessed the curiosity her sex was charged with, who had never once thought of seeing any thing in London that strangers were most solicitous to see; and proposed that very night to conduct her to the playhouse, where the royal family were to be present, at the representation of a new comedy.
Harriet turned a melancholy look towards her brother, and made answer, that she could not think of any amusement that should subject him to hours of solitude in a prison.
Upon this, Annesly was earnest in pressing her to accept sir Thomas's invitation; he said she knew how often he chose to be alone, at times when he could most command society; and that he should find an additional pleasure in theirs, when they returned to him, fraught with the intelligence of the play.
"But there is something unbecoming in it, said Harriet, in the eyes of others."
"That objection, replied Sindall, will be easily removed; we shall go accompanied by Mrs. Eldridge to the gallery, where even those who have many acquaintances in town, are dressed so much in the incognito-way, as never to be discovered.
Annesly repeated his entreaties, Mrs. Eldridge seconded, Sindall enforced them; and
