nces being premised, the reader will not be
surprised to find her smitten by those uncommon qualifications which we
have celebrated in young Fathom. She had in good sooth long sighed in
secret, under the powerful influence of his charms, and practised upon
him all those little arts, by which a woman strives to attract the
admiration, and ensnare the heart of a man she loves; but all his
faculties were employed upon the plan which he had already projected;
that was the goal of his whole attention, to which all his measures
tended; and whether or not he perceived the impression he had made upon
Teresa, he never gave her the least reason to believe he was conscious of
his victory, until he found himself baffled in his design upon the heart
of her mistress.--She therefore persevered in her distant attempts to
allure him, with the usual coquetries of dress and address, and, in the
sweet hope of profiting by his susceptibility, made shift to suppress her
feelings, and keep her passion within bounds, until his supposed danger
alarmed her fears, and raised such a tumult within her breast, that she
could no longer conceal her love, but gave a loose to her sorrow in the
most immoderate expressions of anguish and affliction, and, while his
delirium lasted, behaved with all the agitation of a despairing
shepherdess.

Ferdinand was, or pretended to be, the last person in the family who
understood the situation of her thoughts; when he perceived her passion,
he entered into deliberation with himself, and tasked his reflection and
foresight, in order to discover how best he might convert this conquest
to his own advantage. Here, then, that we may neglect no opportunity of
doing justice to our hero, it will be proper to observe, that, howsoever
unapt his understanding might be to receive and retain the usual culture
of the schools, he was naturally a genius self-taught, in point of
sagacity and invention.--He dived into the characters of mankind, with a
penetration peculiar to himself, and, had he been admitted as a pupil in
any political academy, would have certainly become one of the ablest
statesmen in Europe.

Having revolved all the probable consequences of such a connexion, he
determined to prosecute an amour with the lady whose affection he had
subdued; because he hoped to interest her as an auxiliary in his grand
scheme upon Mademoiselle, which he did not as yet think proper to lay
aside; for he was not more ambitious in the