it may all end happily and
honourably for you, and I am satisfied. But," I said, "you know you
used to tell me, you despised looks."--"She didn't think Mr. C---- was
so particularly handsome." "No, but he's very well to pass, and a
well-grown youth into the bargain." Pshaw! let me put an end to the
fulsome detail. I found he had lived over the way, that he had been
lured thence, no doubt, almost a year before, that they had first spoken
in the street, and that he had never once hinted at marriage, and had
gone away, because (as he said) they were too much together, and that it
was better for her to meet him occasionally out of doors. "There could
be no harm in them walking together." "No, but you may go some where
afterwards."--" One must trust to one's principle for that." Consummate
hypocrite! * * * * * * I told her Mr. M----, who had married her
sister, did not wish to leave the house. I, who would have married her,
did not wish to leave it. I told her I hoped I should not live to see
her come to shame, after all my love of her; but put her on her guard as
well as I could, and said, after the lengths she had permitted herself
with me, I could not help being alarmed at the influence of one over
her, whom she could hardly herself suppose to have a tenth part of my
esteem for her!! She made no answer to this, but thanked me coldly for
my good advice, and rose to go. I begged her to sit a few minutes, that
I might try to recollect if there was anything else I wished to say to
her, perhaps for the last time; and then, not finding anything, I bade
her good night, and asked for a farewell kiss. Do you know she refused;
so little does she understand what is due to friendship, or love, or
honour! We parted friends, however, and I felt deep grief, but no
enmity against her. I thought C---- had pressed his suit after I went,
and had prevailed. There was no harm in that--a little fickleness or
so, a little over-pretension to unalterable attachment--but that was
all. She liked him better than me--it was my hard hap, but I must bear
it. I went out to roam the desert streets, when, turning a corner, whom
should I meet but her very lover? I went up to him and asked for a few
minutes' conversation on a subject that was highly interesting to me and
I believed not indifferent to him: and in the course of four hours'
talk, it came out that for three months previous to my quitting London
for Scotland, she had been play