. The very next day, to my utter confusion, I received the following letter from my friend, Major Mansell; judge if you can of my emotions, on reading its dreadful contents.
Had this reached me a few days sooner, it might have saved me from endless remorse, and I might now have been supremely blest in the possession of my angel, Emily; for angels are not more pure, more spotless.—Ah, Charles! I ought never to have entertained a doubt of it; but my conscience tells me, I was unworthy to call such excellence mine.
Read Mansell's letter, and then say, is there any punishment I can contrive, equal to crimes of that hagg, Lady Stanley?
My dear Sommerville,
I THINK I know you too well to believe my succeeding your Lordship in the good graces of the fair widow, gave you one moment's uneasiness, or that it could possibly weaken your friendship; as a

proof of mine, accept this letter, which I wish from my soul, may come time enough to prevent those infamous effects, which an injured, a jealous woman intended to produce by arts she practiced, with but too much success.
I had long suspected the indifference she affected, on your quitting her for the amiable, the much injured, Miss Herbert, was merely put on to conceal the pangs it gave her; it was unnatural to imagine a conquest, like Lord Sommerville, could be resigned with so much ease; you cannot have forgot how often I have said I doubted her Ladyship's sincerity, I have now most incontestable proofs of my penetration.
You know I was on a pretty intimate footing with her before you left us; she has attractions, my Lord, and knows how to set them off to advantage as well as any one of her sex. I had no serious views in the devoirs I paid her; she could not but know it, I have therefore nothing to reproach myself with.
I often talked of your Lordship, I wished to discover her real sentiments, as I suspected them, and did all in my

power to throw her off her guard; I partly succeeded, and was fully convinced, by her own confession (though she did not, I believe, mean to be quite so explicit, had I not artfully drawn her on by my questions, and appearing to admire her spirit) that the lovely Emily was carried off by her contrivance.
My manner of treating the affair gratified her vanity, and she was weak enough, in the course of several conversations I had with her
