more
circumspection for the future, as I find how strictly they are complied
with."

Miss Milner, the gay, the vain, the dissipated, the haughty Miss Milner,
sunk underneath this kindness, and wept with a gentleness and patience,
which did not give more surprise than it gave joy to Dorriforth. He was
charmed to find her disposition so tractable--prophesied to himself the
future success of his guardianship, and her eternal as well as temporal
happiness from this specimen.

CHAPTER VIII.

Although Dorriforth was the good man that he has been described, there
were in his nature shades of evil--there was an obstinacy which he
himself, and his friends termed firmness of mind; but had not religion
and some opposite virtues weighed heavily in the balance, it would
frequently have degenerated into implacable stubbornness.

The child of a sister once beloved, who married a young officer against
her brother's consent, was at the age of three years left an orphan,
destitute of all support but from his uncle's generosity: but though
Dorriforth maintained, he would never see him. Miss Milner, whose heart
was a receptacle for the unfortunate, no sooner was told the melancholy
history of Mr. and Mrs. Rushbrook, the parents of the child, than she
longed to behold the innocent inheritor of her guardian's resentment,
and took Miss Woodley with her to see the boy. He was at a farm house a
few miles from town; and his extreme beauty and engaging manners, wanted
not the sorrows to which he had been born, to give him farther
recommendation to the kindness of her, who had come to visit him. She
looked at him with admiration and pity, and having endeared herself to
him by the most affectionate words and caresses, on her bidding him
farewell, he cried most pitiously to go along with her. Unused at any
time to resist temptations, whether to reprehensible, or to laudable
actions, she yielded to his supplications, and having overcome a few
scruples of Miss Woodley's, determined to take young Rushbrook to town,
and present him to his uncle. This idea was no sooner formed than
executed. By making a present to the nurse, she readily gained her
consent to part with him for a day or two, and the signs of joy denoted
by the child on being put into the carriage, repaid her beforehand for
every reproof she might receive from her guardian, for the liberty she
had taken.

"Besides," said she to Miss Woodley, who had still her fears, "do you