with which I would not shock your ears, did I not conceive it as absolutely necessary to put you on your guard.
Good heavens, cried I, what are you going to tell me?
You have no reason thank God, answered he, to suffer now any apprehensions, as the danger is at an end; but I cannot call to mind that my own imprudence was the original cause of the injurious reports, without the utmost self-reproach. I think no man can be more sensible than myself of the value and importance of my charge, yet I own I committed the most unpardonable oversight in allowing you and your sister to remain for a week under the roof of a woman of whose character I was not perfectly informed.
Her appearance indeed was so plausible, and your stay to be so short, that I

took it on trust, nor once harboured a suspicion of her being what she has proved—one of the most abandoned and profligate of her sex: a wretch entirely divested of honour and conscience, who has had the audacity and wickedness to traffic with your reputation, and who perceiving you had kindled the presumptuous wishes of a libertine, dared to represent you to him in the most doubtful, nay in the most infamous light, in order, by flattering his licentious hopes, to reap the lucrative fruits of his folly and prodigality.
Oh! my dear Sir, interrupted I in a tone of impatient vexation, let us return to solitude and obscurity, where, though listlesness may intrude and languor invade our quiet, danger and mortification never can molest us. How unjust have I not been to the cautious experience of my dear father, in sometimes suspecting he had represented the world and its fallacious

charms through that medium with which calamity and disappointment ever invest the face of nature. I am now fatally convinced that the pleasures of society fade and disappear when opposed to the snares, anxieties, and disgusts, which sour and taint all its enjoyments.
You are too young, and much too amiable, returned Mr. Howard, smiling at my impetuosity, to become a cynic so early upon those whom nature has formed to adorn society as well as to improve it. The world has powerful claims; and Miss Seymour must not talk of disgust because a temporary mortification obscures for a moment the many rational enjoyments which it offers to every well-regulated mind. But you must allow me to go on with my story.
Mr. Roatsley, after expressing himself in the warmest and most respectful terms of both the amiable sisters, confessed that he had been infinitely shocked and astonished

to learn, immediately almost