-- wished to be within hearing of the conference
between her and Sir Charles: so did Lady G----: and while they were thus
wishing, in came Sir Charles, his face all in a glow; Lady L----, said
he, be so good as to attend Lady Olivia.

She went to her; Sir Charles staid not with us: yet went not to the lady;
but into his study. Dr. Bartlett attended him there: the doctor returned
soon after to us. His noble heart is vexed, said he: Lady Olivia has
greatly disturbed him: he chooses to be alone.

Lady L---- afterwards told us, that she found the lady in violent anguish
of spirit; her aunt endeavouring to calm her: she, however, politely
addressed herself to Lady L----, and begging her aunt to withdraw for a
few moments, she owned to her, in French, her passion for her brother:
She was not, she said, ashamed to own it to his sister, who must know
that his merit would dignify the passion of the noblest woman. She had
endeavoured, she said, to conquer hers: she had been willing to give way
to the prior attachments that he had pleaded for a lady of her own
country, Signora Clementina della Porretta, whom she allowed to have had
great merit; but who, having irrecoverably been put out of her right
mind, was shut up at Naples by a brother, who vowed eternal enmity to Sir
Charles; and from whom his life would be in the utmost hazard, if he went
over. She owned, that her chief motive for coming to England was, to
cast her fortune at her brother's feet; and, as she knew him to be a man
of honour, to comply with any terms he should propose to her. He had
offered to the family della Porretta to allow their daughter her
religion, and her confessor, and to live with her every other year in
Italy. She herself, not inferior in birth, in person, in mind, as she
said, she presumed, and superior in fortune, the riches of three branches
of her family, all rich, having centred in her, insisted not now upon
such conditions. Her aunt, she said, knew not that she proposed, on
conviction, a change of her religion; but she was resolved not to conceal
anything from Lady L----. She left her to judge how much she must be
affected, when he declared his obligation to leave England; and
especially when he owned, that it was to go to Bologna, and that so
suddenly, as if, as she apprehended at first, it was to avoid her. She
had been in tears, she said, and even would have kneeled to him, to
induce him to suspend his journey for one month, and then to have