 regiment, till he was now obliged, by the change of a colonel, to take some of the duty in his turn, and was ordered a recruiting, as I have taken due occasion to relate.
In this company did Harriet return to her father. As the news of disaster is commonly speedy in its course, the good man had already been confusedly informed of the attack which had been made on his daughter. To him therefore this meeting was so joyful, as almost to blot from his remembrance the calamities which had lately befallen his family.
But far different were the sensations of Harriet: she shrunk from the sight of a parent, of whose purity she now conceived herself unworthy, and fell blushing on his neck, which she bathed with a profusion of tears. This he imagined to proceed from her sensibility of those woes which her unhappy brother had suffered; and he forbore to take notice of her distress, any otherwise than by maintaining a degree of chearfulness himself, much above what the feelings of his heart could warrant.
He was attended, when her fellow-travellers accompanied Miss Annesly to his house, by a gentleman, whom he now introduced to her by the name of Rawlinson, saying he was a very worthy friend of his, who had lately returned from abroad. Harriet indeed recollected to have heard her father mention such a one in their conversations before. Though a good deal younger than Annesly, he had been a very intimate school-fellow of his in London, from which place he was sent to the East Indies, and returned, as was common in those days, with some thousand pounds, and a good conscience, to his native country.
A genuine plainness of manners, and a warm benevolence of heart, neither the refinements of life, nor the subtleties of traffic, had been able to weaken in Rawlinson; and he set out, under the impression of both, immediately after his arrival in England, to visit a companion, whose virtues he remembered with veneration, and the value of whose friendship he had not forgotten. Annesly received him with that welcome which his fire-side ever afforded to the worthy; and Harriet, through the dimness of her grief, smiled on the friend of her father.


RAWLINSON found his reception so agreeable, that he lengthened his visit much beyond the limits which he at first intended it; and the earnest request of Annesly, to whom his friend's company was equally pleasing, extended them still a little farther.
During this period, he had daily opportunities of observing the amiable dispositions of Harriet. He observed, indeed
