f
acting as a negotiator, and the reasons which might, in the course
of such a treaty, be urged with advantage to induce this fellow to
leave the country--Why, this is the very course chalked out in my
last letter! You are bolder than the boldest gipsy, for you not only
steal my ideas, and disfigure them that they may pass for yours, but
you have the assurance to come a-begging with them to the door of
the original parent! No man like you for stealing other men's
inventions, and cooking them up in your own way. However, Harry,
bating a little self-conceit and assumption, thou art as honest a
fellow as ever man put faith in--clever, too, in your own style,
though not quite the genius you would fain pass for.--Come on thine
own terms, and come as speedily as thou canst. I do not reckon the
promise I made the less binding, that you very generously make no
allusion to it.

"Thine,
"ETHERINGTON.

"P.S. One single caution I must add--do not mention my name to any
one at Harrowgate, or your prospect of meeting me, or the route
which you are about to take. On the purpose of your journey, it is
unnecessary to recommend silence. I know not whether such doubts are
natural to all who have secret measures to pursue, or whether nature
has given me an unusual share of anxious suspicion; but I cannot
divest myself of the idea, that I am closely watched by some one
whom I cannot discover. Although I concealed my purpose of coming
hither from all mankind but you, whom I do not for an instant
suspect of blabbing, yet it was known to this Martigny, and he is
down here before me. Again, I said not a word--gave not a hint to
any one of my views towards Clara, yet the tattling people here had
spread a report of a marriage depending between us, even before I
could make the motion to her brother. To be sure, in such society
there is nothing talked of but marrying and giving in marriage; and
this, which alarms me, as connected with my own private purposes,
may be a bare rumour, arising out of the gossip of the place--Yet I
feel like the poor woman in the old story, who felt herself watched
by an eye that glared upon her from behind the tapestry.

"I should have told you in my last, that I had been recognised at a
public entertainment by the old clergyman, who pronounced the
matrimonial bl