; but that her behaviour had all at once betrayed

a displeasure for which she had not deigned to assign a cause; and that she had left me with abrupt haste, notwithstanding my most earnest intreaties only for a few moments stay.
Bradshaw at once cleared up my doubts, enabled me to comprehend what had appeared so unaccountably mysterious, and by informing me of the credit with which the report of my marriage has been circulated (a report, he told me, which even Miss Seymour herself had once hinted to him) enabled me by an immediate explanation to relieve my own mind and convince her's of the injustice of her suspicions.
His Lordship then entered more fully into the particulars which have given rise to this idea. Circumstances, said he, have lately discovered to me that Lord Mortonbury and my grandfather very early formed the plan of a connection between Lady Elizabeth and myself.

The young lady's rank, fortune, and accomplishments, undoubtedly render her an object of singular importance to those who look in matrimony for nothing beyond such advantages; and Lord Belmont flattered himself the friendship which subsisted between the two families, by affording opportunities for frequent intercourse, would facilitate his wishes. This plan however, like most others which rest on adventitious events, failed of success; my early intimacy with Lady Elizabeth, far from promoting warmer sentiments, merely served to discover to me those little foibles which in a lesser or greater degree pervade every human character, but which in her no tender partiality on my part either palliated or concealed. Lady Elizabeth's errors, though not of a more unamiable nature than those of most women of her rank who have received a similar education, were particularly ill suited to my

disposition, and to those views of domestic felicity to which, even in my most dissipated moments, my wishes have invariably pointed; and soon suspicious of my grandfather's views, which must have utterly destroyed all my future prospects of happiness and which I found every individual of the family so anxiously desired, since my last return from the Continent, I have uniformly endeavoured by the most respectful distance to demonstrate that I did not presume to regard myself as entitled to offer my addresses to one of the first heiresses in England.
Some weeks ago, however, I received a letter from Lord Belmont, in plain terms proposing the match to my consideration, and representing it to me in all those glowing colours which a favourite plan ever receives from the pen of the contrivers. My mother too, who had often before hinted to me her wishes on the same subject and to whom my

Lord had written
