he least
objection. In the meantime, she is so much indisposed, that
she cannot possibly see company; so I beg you will not take
the trouble of making a fruitless journey to this place.
Perhaps your future conduct may deserve her forgiveness,
and really, as I am concerned for your happiness, which you
assure me depends upon her condescension, I wish with all my
heart it may; and am, notwithstanding all that has happened,
your sincere well-wisher. "Cecilia Gauntlet."

From this epistle, and the information of his messenger, our hero
learned, that his mistress had actually profited by his wild-goose
chase, so as to make a safe retreat to her mother's house. Though sorry
to hear of her indisposition, he was also piqued at her implacability,
as well as at some stately paragraphs of the letter, in which, he
thought, the good lady had consulted her own vanity, rather than
her good sense. These motives of resentment helped him to bear his
disappointment like a philosopher, especially as he had now quieted
his conscience, in proffering to redress the injury he had done; and,
moreover, found himself, with regard to his love, in a calm state of
hope and resignation.

A seasonable fit of illness is an excellent medicine for the turbulence
of passion. Such a reformation had the fever produced on the economy of
his thoughts, that he moralized like an apostle, and projected several
prudential schemes for his future conduct. In the meantime, as soon
as his health was sufficiently re-established, he took a trip to the
garrison, in order to visit his friends; and learned from Hatchway's own
mouth, that he had broke the ice of courtship to his aunt, and that his
addresses were now fairly afloat; though, when he first declared himself
to the widow, after she had been duly prepared for the occasion, by her
niece and the rest of her friends, she had received his proposal with
a becoming reserve, and piously wept at the remembrance of her husband,
observing, that she should never meet with his fellow.

Peregrine promoted the lieutenant's suit with all his influence, and
all Mrs. Trunnion's objections to the match being surmounted, it was
determined, that the day of marriage should be put off for three months,
that her reputation might not suffer by a precipitate engagement. His
next care was to give orders for erecting a plain marble monument to the
memory of his uncle, on which the foll