From the moment this agreement was made, the young Louisa regained her complection and her appetite; and being now initiated into the family of this lady, had no longer any care to take than to oblige her, a thing not difficult, Melanthe being good-natured, and strongly prepossessed in favour of her new friend, for so she vouchsafed to call her, and to use her accordingly.

As a proof of it, she made her in a very short time the confident of her dearest secrets:  they were one day sitting together, when accidentally some mention was made of the power of love.  You are too young, Louisa, said Melanthe, to have experienced the wonderful effects of that passion in yourself, and therefore cannot be expected to have much compassion for what it can inflict on others.

Indeed, madam, answered she, tho’ I never have yet seen a man who gave me a moment’s pain on that score, yet I believe there are no emotions whatever so strong as those of love, and that it is capable of influencing people of the best sense to things which in their nature they are most averse to.

Well, my dear, resumed the other, since I find you have so just a notion of it, I will confide in your discretion so far as to let you know, that but for an ungrateful man, I had not looked on my native country as a desart, and resolved to seek a cure for my ill-treated and abused tenderness in foreign parts.

My quality, continued she, I need not inform you of; you have doubtless heard that my family yields to few in antiquity, and that there is an estate belonging to it sufficient to support the dignity of its title; but my father having many children, could not give very great portions to the daughters:  I was therefore disposed of, much against my inclinations, to a nobleman, whom my unlucky charms had so much captivated as to make him not only take me with no other dowry than my cloaths and jewels, but also to settle a large jointure upon me, which, he being dead, I at present enjoy.  I cannot say that all the obligations he laid upon me could engage a reciprocal regard:—­I behaved with indifference to him while living, and little lamented him when dead:  not that I was prepossessed in favour of any other man;—­my heart, entirely free, was reserved to be the conquest of the too charming perfidious Henricus, who arriving soon after my lord’s decease, and bringing with him all the accomplishments which every different court he had visited could afford, join’d to the most enchanting person nature ever formed, soon made me know I was not that insensible creature I had thought myself.

I happened to be at court when he came to kiss her majesty’s hand on his return; and whether it was that my eyes testified too much the admiration this first sight of him struck me with, or that he really discovered something more attractive in me than any lady in the presence I know not, but he seemed to distinguish me in a particular manner, and I heard him say to my lord G——­n in a whisper, that I was the finest woman he had ever seen; but what gave me more pleasure than even this praise, was an agreement I heard made between him and the same lord to go that evening to a raffle at mrs.  C—­rt-s—­r’s.  I was one of those who had put in, tho’ if I had not, I should certainly, have gone for a second sight of him, who when he went out of the drawing-room seemed to have left me but half myself.