in love, I beg that you will make the same
excuse for me."

"Then," said he earnestly, "before your heart is in that state which I
have described, exert your reason."

"I shall," answered she, "and not consent to marry a man whom I could
never love."

"Unless your heart is already given away, Miss Milner, what can make you
speak with such a degree of certainty?"

He thought on Lord Frederick when he said this, and he riveted his eyes
upon her as if to penetrate her sentiments, and yet trembled for what he
should find there. She blushed, and her looks would have confirmed her
guilty, if the unembarrassed and free tone of her voice, more than her
words, had not preserved her from that sentence.

"No," she replied, "my heart is not given away; and yet I can venture to
declare, Sir Edward will never possess an atom of it."

"I am sorry, for both your sakes, that these are your sentiments," he
replied. "But as your heart is still your own," (and he seemed rejoiced
to find it was) "permit me to warn you how you part with a thing so
precious--the dangers, the sorrows you hazard in bestowing it, are
greater than you may be aware of. The heart once gone, our thoughts, our
actions, are no more our own, than that is." He seemed _forcing_ himself
to utter all this, and yet broke off as if he could have said much more,
if the extreme delicacy of the subject had not prevented him.

When he left the room, and she heard the door shut after him, she said,
with an inquisitive thoughtfulness, "What can make good people so
skilled in all the weaknesses of the bad? Mr. Dorriforth, with all those
prudent admonitions, appears rather like a man who has passed his life
in the gay world, experienced all its dangerous allurements, all its
repentant sorrows; than like one who has lived his whole time secluded
in a monastery, or in his own study. Then he speaks with such exquisite
sensibility on the subject of love, that he commends the very thing
which he attempts to depreciate. I do not think my Lord Frederick would
make the passion appear in more pleasing colours by painting its
delights, than Mr. Dorriforth could in describing its sorrows--and if he
talks to me frequently in this manner, I shall certainly take pity on
Lord Frederick, for the sake of his adversary's eloquence."

Miss Woodley, who heard the conclusion of this speech with the tenderest
concern, cried, "Alas! you then think seriously of Lord Frederick!"

"Suppose I do, w