 this affair, and be assured, in respect of all the requisite feminine virtues, no Emma—from Prior's nut-brown maid to Emma Corbet, can have a more extensive and proper sense than
Your very humble, And most grateful handmaid, EMMA DISTICH.

This letter seemed to clear up the whole business, and it being upon enquiry found that the name of the lady his lordship saw at Mr. Ingot's house was Le Clerc, Lady Roebuck did not ballance a moment in her mind, as to the probability of her being the mother of Annette.
In this exigence she consulted Lady Hazard on what conduct she ought to pursue, who being, as we have seen, no friend to duplicity, though even of that laudable kind recommended by Emma, advised her, without delay, to inform Sir Sidney of the whole truth, telling her she had wonderfully well succeeded with her lord by the same mode of experiment within the last fortnight.
This brought forward the story of Miss Snaffle, which the reader has seen so fully investigated, and

which not being told without the highest encomiums on Mr. Standfast's attachment and integrity, and an information that his lordship had settled an additional annuity on him, Lady Roebuck testified the greatest surprise, which Lady Hazard perceiving, said, you may well shudder at the world's villany. I wish I could prevail with my lord to embrace Sir Sidney's offer, that I might live always with you in retirement.
Lady Roebuck, whose shudderings had been at hearing of Standfast's great influence in the family, was upon the point of saying something which might have led to an investigation of his conduct, not very favourable to that gentleman; but finding Lady Hazard had given her surprise another motive, she contented herself for the present with falling in with that lady's conjectures, and simply remarking that indeed the expectations of villains were so inadequate to the pains they took, and the risks they run, that she wondered men became knaves to be infamous, when, by only being honest, they might be happy.


I MAKE no scruple to confess that my leaving the business of Miss Le Clerc and the possibility of Standfast's detection in such a state of uncertainty as they appeared to be at the end of the last chapter, is taking a liberty with the reader, and, what is worse, with the ladies. But the consideration of having so long forborne to introduce my hero, who, by the way, would be the last to excuse me for being guilty of the smallest incivility to the fair sex,
