After the ball, continued he, monsieur the count de Bellfleur desired me to accompany him to his lodgings, and, as soon as we were alone, told me, he had a little secret to acquaint me with, but that, before he revealed it, he must have the promise of my assistance.  As he spoke this with a gay and negligent air, I imagined it a thing of no great consequence, or if it were, he was a man of too much honour, and also knew me too well to desire or expect I would engage in any thing unbecoming that character:  indeed I could think of nothing but an amour or a duel, tho’ I was far from being able to guess of what service I could be to him in the former.  I was, however, unwarily drawn in to give my word, and he then made me the confident of a passion, which, he said, had received its birth from the first moment he beheld the Belle Angloise, for by that term, pursued he, bowing, he distinguished the adorable Louisa:  that he had made some discovery of his flame, but that finding; himself rejected, as he thought, in too severe a manner, and without affording him opportunity to attest his sincerity, he had converted his addresses, tho’ not his passion, to a lady who, he perceived, had the care of her, acting in this manner, partly thro’ picque at your disdain, and partly to gratify his eyes with the sight of you, which he has reason to fear you had totally deprived him of but for this stratagem.  He confessed to me that he found the object of his pretended ardours infinitely more kind than she who inspires the real ones:  but this gratification of his vanity is of little consequence to his peace;—­he engaged me to attend you this day, to conjure you to believe his heart is incapable of being influenced by any other charms, and whatever he makes shew of to Melanthe, his heart is devoted wholly to you,—­begs you to permit him to entertain you without the presence of that lady, the means of which he will take care to contrive; and charged me to assure you, that there is no sacrifice so great, but he will readily offer it to convince you of the sincerity of his attachment.

This, madame, added he, is the unpleasing task my promise bound me to perform, and which I have acquitted myself of with the same pain that man would do who, by some strange caprice of fate, was constrained to throw into the sea the sum of all his hopes.

The indignation which filled the virtuous foul of Louisa, while he was giving her this detail of the count’s presumption, falsehood, and ingratitude, prevented her from giving much attention to the apology with which he concluded.  Never, since the behaviour of mr.  B——­n at mrs.  C—­g—­’s, had she met with any thing that she thought so much merited her resentment:—­so great was her disdain she had not words to express it, but by some tears, which the rising passion forced from her eyes:—­Heaven! cried she, which of my actions has drawn on me this unworthy treatment?—­This was all she was able to utter, while she walked backward and forward in the room endeavouring to compose herself, and form some answer befitting of the message.