, and solicited me to take a place immediately in a chaise in which she had come to the city, that I too incautiously complied.

"You are a stranger to me, and I am unacquainted with your character. What little I have seen of your deportment, and what little I have lately heard concerning you from Mrs. Wentworth, do not produce unfavourable impressions; but the apology I have made was due to my own reputation, and should have been offered to you whatever your character had been." There she stopped.

"I came not hither," said I, "to receive an apology. Your demeanour, on our first interview, shielded you sufficiently from any suspicions or surmises that I could form. What you have now mentioned was likewise mentioned by your friend, and was fully believed upon her authority. My purpose, in coming, related not to you, but to another. I desired merely to interest your generosity and justice on behalf of one whose destitute and dangerous condition may lay claim to your compassion and your succour."

"I comprehend you," said she, with an air of some perplexity. "I know the claims of that person."

"And will you comply with them?"

"In what manner can I serve her?"

"By giving her the means of living."

"Does she not possess them already?"

"She is destitute. Her dependence was wholly placed upon one that is dead, by whom her person was dishonoured and her fortune embezzled."

"But she still lives. She is not turned into the street. She is not destitute of home."

"But what a home!"

"Such as she may choose to remain in."

"She cannot choose it. She must not choose it. She remains through ignorance, or through the incapacity of leaving it."

"But how shall she be persuaded to a change?"

"I will persuade her. I will fully explain her situation. I will supply her with a new home."

"You will persuade her to go with you, and to live at a home of your providing and on your bounty?"

"Certainly."

"Would that change be worthy of a cautious person? Would it benefit her reputation? Would it prove her love of independence?"

"My purposes are good. I know not why she should suspect them. But I am only anxious to be the instrument. Let her be indebted to one of her own sex, of unquestionable reputation. Admit her into this house. Invite her