e easily perceived, she took a great deal
of pains to disguise the joy she conceived at this prospect of raising
her fortune, but was too little accustomed to dissimulation, to do it
effectually, and both the one and the other gave him much
satisfaction.

Circumstances being in the manner I related, it is not natural to
suppose any long sollicitation was required.--Laetitia affected not an
indifference she was free from, and Natura pressing for the speedy
consummation of his wishes, a day was appointed for the celebration of
the nuptials, and both the intended bride and bridegroom set
themselves about making the necessary preparations usual in such
cases.

But see, how capable are our finest resolutions of being shaken by
accidents!--the most assured of men may be compared to the leaf of a
tree, which veers with every blast of wind, and is never long in one
position.--Had any one told Natura he had taken all this pains for
nothing, and that he would be more anxious to get off his promise of
marrying Laetitia, than ever he had been to engage one from her for
that purpose; he would have thought himself highly injured, and that
the person who said this of him was utterly a stranger to his
sentiments or character; yet so it happened, and the poor Letitia
found all her hopes of grandeur vanish into air, when they seemed just
on the point of being accomplished.--The occasion of this strange and
sudden transition was as follows:

Two days before that prefixed for his marriage, Natura received a
packet from Gibralter, which brought him an account of the death of
his brother.--That unfortunate young gentleman, being convinced by his
sufferings, and perhaps too by his own remorse, and stings of
conscience of the foulness of the crime he had been guilty of, fell
into a languishing disorder, soon after his arrival in that country,
which left those about him no expectations of his ever getting the
better of.--Finding his dissolution near, he wrote a letter to Natura,
full of contrition, and intreaties for forgiveness. This epistle
accompanied that which related his death, and both together plunged
Natura into very melancholly thoughts.--The offence his brother had
been guilty of, was indeed great; but, when he remembered that he had
repented, and was now no more, all resentment, all revenge, against
him ceased with his existence, and a tender pity supplied their
place:--what, while _living_, he never would have forgave, when _de