ould ask her
such a question.

I shall call upon you at six o'clock, and shall expect to find you
determined to go to the governor's this evening, and to dance:
Fitzgerald begs the honor of being your partner.

Believe me, Emily, these kind of unmeaning sacrifices are childish;
your heart is new to love, and you have all the romance of a girl:
Rivers would, on your account, be hurt to hear you had refused to dance
in his absence, though he might be flattered to know you had for a
moment entertained such an idea.

I pardon you for having the romantic fancies of seventeen, provided
you correct them with the good sense of four and twenty.

Adieu! I have engaged myself to Colonel H----, on the presumption
that you are too polite to refuse to dance with Fitzgerald, and too
prudent to refuse to dance at all.

Your affectionate
A. Fermor.

LETTER 122.

To Miss Fermor, at Silleri.

Quebec, Saturday morning.

How unjust have I been in my hatred of Madame Des Roches! she spent
yesterday with us, and after dinner desired to converse with me an hour
in my apartment, where she opened to me all her heart on the subject of
her love for Rivers.

She is the noblest and most amiable of women, and I have been in
regard to her the most capricious and unjust: my hatred of her was
unworthy my character; I blush to own the meanness of my sentiments,
whilst I admire the generosity of hers.

Why, my dear, should I have hated her? she was unhappy, and deserved
rather my compassion: I had deprived her of all hope of being beloved,
it was too much to wish to deprive her also of his conversation. I
knew myself the only object of Rivers's love; why then should I have
envied her his friendship? she had the strongest reason to hate me, but
I should have loved and pitied her.

Can there be a misfortune equal to that of loving Rivers without
hope of a return? Yet she has not only born this misfortune without
complaint, but has been the confidante of his passion for another; he
owned to her all his tenderness for me, and drew a picture of me,
which, she told me, ought, had she listened to reason, to have
destroyed even the shadow of hope: but that love, ever ready to flatter
and deceive, had betrayed her into the weakness of supposing it
possible I might refuse him, and that gratitude might, in that case,
touch his heart with tenderness for one who loved him with the most
pure and disinterested affection; that her