 a reserve so foreign to my feelings, and so injurious to the favourable sentiments with which your Lordship honours me, as to deny that my surprise at its contents was not unmixed with pleasure, and that the perusal relieved me from much perplexity and even uneasiness.

Lady Aubrey, of whose elevated qualities you have formed so just an idea, anxiously desires the pleasure of knowing you. She requests your Lordship's company at breakfast to-morrow: and permit me to assure you of a favourable reception from all the present inhabitants of her residence.
H. SEYMOUR.
AUBREY CASTLE, JULY 13.
Having dispatched my note, I returned to Lady Aubrey. Oh! Sophia! how amiable, how exalted is this woman! Her spirits were this evening exhilerated even to gaiety, her eyes sparkled with pleasure, and the agonizing recollections, which remembrance might be supposed on this occasion to have naturally renewed, were wholly suppressed or rather supplanted by the prospect of my approaching happiness. She asked me a thousand questions in regard to Lord Linrose,

made me minutely describe his person, and insisted on my shewing her a little sketch on ivory, which at Hilbury Lodge soothed many a melancholy hour, but which I had at length determined to destroy as it afforded an insinuating indulgence extremely ill adapted to that victory over my sensibility which I have so often attempted without success. This preliminary towards conquering my weakness, you will perhaps sagely observe, ought to have been the first step. I grant it; but indeed you must be precisely in my situation before you can prove an adequate judge of the difficulties of such a sacrifice.
We separated early; and I have been writing while I ought to have been in bed. But I have little chance of sleeping; though the weakness of my frame at present renders the agitations of the day so violent on my spirits, that I feel quite exhausted, and think of to-morrow's

interview even with some degree of apprehension. Yes, Sophia; for is not there something formidable in the idea of seeing Lord Linrose after the weakness of my behaviour at our last meeting.
JULY 14.
I had no inclination to sleep when I gave over writing last night, but I began to consider that if I did not contrive to get a few hours rest after the mental and bodily fatigues of the preceding day, I should look still more like a ghost than I already do; and really you never beheld any thing so pale and so ugly as I am grown of late.
I suspect however my complexion was sufficiently florid this morning, when Lord Linrose entered the breakfasting
