interest.

Among the concourse of nobility and gentry, whom merely the love of
pleasure had drawn hither, and for that end were continually forming
parties, Melanthe never failed of making one either in one company or
other: Louisa, whom that lady still treated with her former kindness, or
rather with an increase of it, was also seldom absent, and when she was
so, the fault was wholly her own inclination: but in truth, that hurry
of incessant diversion, which at first had seemed so ravishing to her
young and unexperienced mind, began, by a more perfect acquaintance with
it, to grow tiresome to her, and she rather chose sometimes to retire
with a favourite book into her closet, than to go to the most elegant
entertainment.

It is certain, indeed, that her disposition was rather inclined to
serious than the contrary, and that, joined with the reflections which
her good understanding was perpetually presenting her with, on the
uncertainty of her birth, the precariousness of her dependance, and her
enforced quitting the only person from whom she could expect the means
of any solid establishment in the world, had rendered her sometimes
extremely thoughtful, even in the midst of those pleasures that are
ordinarily most enchanting to one of her sex and age. But as she never
was elated with the respect paid to her supposed condition, so she never
was mortified with the consciousness of her real one, to a behaviour
such as might have degraded the highest birth; neither appearing to
expect it, or be covetous of honours, nor meanly ashamed of accepting
them when offered. And while by this prudent management she secured
herself from any danger of being insulted whenever it should be known
who she was, she also gave no occasion for any one to make too deep an
enquiry into her descent or fortune.

But now the time was arrived when those deficiencies gave her more
anxiety than hitherto they had done; and love in one moment filled her
with those repinings at her fate, which neither vanity or ambition would
ever have had power to do.

Melanthe here, as at Vienna, received the visits of all whose birth,
fortune, or accomplishments, gave them a pretence; but there was none
who paid them so frequently, or which she encouraged with so much
pleasure as those of the count de Bellfleur, a French nobleman belonging
to the above-mentioned prince of Conti: she often told Louisa, when they
were alone, that there was something in the air and m