“P.S. Burn this paper, I conjure you, the moment you have read it; but lay the contents of it up in your heart never to be forgotten.”

I now no longer wondered, pursued Dorilaus, at that impulse I had to love you;—­I found it the simpathy of nature, and adored the divine power.—­After having well fixed in my mind all the particulars of this amazing secret, I performed her injunction, and committed it to the flames:  I had opportunity enough to inform her in what manner Horatio had disposed of himself, and let her know you were gone with a lady on her travels:  I concealed indeed the motive, fearing to give her any occasion of reproaching herself for having so long concealed what my ignorance of might have involved us all in guilt and ruin.

I stayed some few days at the castle, and then took my leave:  she said many tender things at parting concerning you, and seemed well satisfied with the assurances I gave her of making the same provision for you, as I must have done had the ceremony of the church obliged me to it.  This seemed indeed the only thing for which she lived, and, I was informed, died in a few days after.

At my return to England I renewed my endeavours to discover where you were, but could hear nothing since you wrote from Aix-la-Chappelle, and was equally troubled that I had received no letters from your brother.—­I doubted not but he had fallen in the battle, and mourned him as lost;—­till an old servant perceiving the melancholy I was in, acquainted me that several letters had been left at my house by the post during my absence, but that the kinsman I had left to take care of my affairs had secreted them, jealous, no doubt, of the fondness I have expressed for him.—­This so enraged me, when on examination I had too much reason to be assured of this treachery, that I turned my whole estate into ready money, and resolved to quit England for ever, and pass my life here, this being a country I always loved, and had many reasons to dislike my own.

Here I soon heard news of my Horatio, and such as filled me with a pleasure, which wanted nothing of being complete but the presence of my dear Louisa to partake of it.

Dorilaus then went on, and acquainted her with the particulars of Horatio’s story, as he had learned it from the baron de Palfoy, with whom he now was very intimate; but as the reader is sufficiently informed of those transactions, it would be needless to repeat them; so I shall only say that Dorilaus arrived in France in a short time after Horatio had left it to enter into the service of the king of Sweden, and had wrote that letter, inserted in the eighteenth chapter, in order to engage that young warrior to return, some little time before his meeting with Louisa.

Nothing now was wanting to the contentment of this tender father but the presence of Horatio, which he was every day expecting, when, instead of himself, those letters from him arrived which contained his resolution of remaining with Charles XII. till the conquests he was in pursuit of should be accomplished.