, said I, [and I really, in a manner, involuntarily bent
my knee,] I have before me an angel indeed. I can hardly forbear
prostration, and to beg your influence to draw me after you to the world
you are aspiring to!--Yet--but what shall I say--Only, dearest
excellence, make me, in some small instances, serviceable to you, that I
may (if I survive you) have the glory to think I was able to contribute
to your satisfaction, while among us.

Here I stopt. She was silent. I proceeded--Have you no commission to
employ me in; deserted as you are by all your friends; among strangers,
though I doubt not, worthy people? Cannot I be serviceable by message,
by letter-writing, by attending personally, with either message or
letter, your father, your uncles, your brother, your sister, Miss Howe,
Lord M., or the Ladies his sisters?--any office to be employed to serve
you, absolutely independent of my friend's wishes, or of my own wishes
to oblige him?--Think, Madam, if I cannot?

I thank you, Sir: very heartily I thank you: but in nothing that I can at
present think of, or at least resolve upon, can you do me service. I
will see what return the letter I have written will bring me.--Till then
----

My life and my fortune, interrupted I, are devoted to your service.
Permit me to observe, that here you are, without one natural friend; and
(so much do I know of your unhappy case) that you must be in a manner
destitute of the means to make friends----

She was going to interrupt me, with a prohibitory kind of earnestness in
her manner.

I beg leave to proceed, Madam: I have cast about twenty ways how to
mention this before, but never dared till now. Suffer me now, that I
have broken the ice, to tender myself--as your banker only.--I know you
will not be obliged: you need not. You have sufficient of your own, if
it were in your hands; and from that, whether you live or die, will I
consent to be reimbursed. I do assure you, that the unhappy man shall
never know either my offer, or your acceptance--Only permit me this small
----

And down behind her chair dropt a bank note of 100L. which I had brought
with me, intending some how or other to leave it behind me: nor shouldst
thou ever have known it, had she favoured me with the acceptance of it;
as I told her.

You give me great pain, Mr. Belford, said she, by these instances of your
humanity. And yet, considering the company I have seen you in, I am not
sorry to find you capa