lady of the ascension at Nancy—which was the very place our travellers went to—had been pretty well scandalized by the business of Madame Combrie already, and therefore they were very little likely to gather any intelligence from thence. Indeed the matter was so taken in dudgeon, that had Sir Sidney stayed any considerable time, and repeated his solicitations, it is within possibility that he might have been considered as an accessary to the fact of Combrie's procuring the fortune from Goufre, and so have been accused of the very fraud which he had been so angry with Charles for committing.—Thus, as we have seen, he came away from France no wiser than he went there.
The reader will now see that, as the parties had no sort of communication with each other, it was impossible they should compare notes; consequently, no one of them, in such a length of time, had entertained the smallest suspicion of what now, in one moment, appeared to be beyond a doubt.
I have two or three times hinted—for I did not chuse to do any more—that Mrs. Combrie resembled Annette, and there are several passages in this work where the reader would very strongly have scented

this game, if I had not opportunely put up some other to divert his attention.
The blood hound Gloss, however, has at length sound it, and, like all prey started by such sanguinary hunters, it leads us a tedious chase, only to bring us to the knowledge of mischief.
To leave every thing but plain narration, never was there apparent happiness so dashed by certain disappointment. Every comparative circumstance served to confirm the fact, and misery seemed now to confound the innocent with the guilty, till at length Emma herself, after torturing probability by every ingenious and subtle investigation her invention could supply—all which, at an earlier period, perhaps I should have given at length—was compelled to confess that there was novelty in every thing relative to our lovers, for that, contrary to all established rules, they were born to be virtuous and unhappy.
I know not if I have introduced any thing into this history so truly pathetic as what it is now my reluctant duty to mention. The health of Annette was only completely confirmed on that very day when the whole family were convinced she could not bless him for whom alone she wished to live, and

she was welcomed to reason only to be plunged into misery worse than madness. The delight that every one felt at once more beholding the angelic innocence of her soul conveyed by those benevolent smiles which now spoke her thankful joy, was dashed with a mixture of agony; sighs