 is to be trusted, I will venture to hope

that a behaviour which I have been unwillingly constrained hitherto to support will not, when its motives are candidly examined, utterly exclude me from the prospect of obtaining your friendship.
Confounded by an address so unexpected, we bowed in silence; and my sister leading to the sopha we all seated ourselves.
I am now venturing on a step, resumed her Ladyship, which I have long ardently wished it in my power to pursue, but which even at this moment is so dangerous and daring, that the exigency of the present occasion, and a due regard to my own character only, can excuse or palliate my imprudence. I have long most anxiously desired the opportunity of a moment like this, in which I could fairly and candidly lay before you the motives of a conduct which must doubtless have appeared to you harsh, cruel, and unfeeling. Alas! you knew

not, that while duty withheld from you the protection to which you so justly laid claim, slander and injustice united to render the prohibition on my part easy to fulfil. Lately, but very lately, was I made acquainted with the value of what, by the commands of a parent, I am deprived of enjoying—your friendship and society. No sooner however was the veil taken from my eyes, than my mind became uneasy till it had acknowledged its injurious prejudices; and some alarming circumstances, to which I must entreat one quarter of an hour's attention, have at length determined me to hazard the danger of Lord Belmont's displeasure, should this act of disobedience reach his ears, rather than continue to appear in a light so injurious to my heart, so contrary to my real feelings.
Having received a bow of acknowledgment from my sister, and an assurance

from me that the present apology entirely obliterated all recollection of what once perhaps we might have considered as unkind, her Ladyship proceeded.
I must in the first place sincerely acknowledge, continued she, that I have no adequate apology to offer for having given credit to aspersions which I have since found so perfectly ill founded and unjust; but perhaps you may be kind enough to admit some sort of palliation from the utter ignorance in which I had been retained respecting you. That I had such relations, was merely all I knew; and no sooner had I received Mr. Howard's letter, than I determined in my own mind to afford you all the civility, kindness, and attention, to which your youth, sex, and situation in a quarter of the world entirely new, justly entitled you, especially as
