Monsieur du Plessis looked on her all this while with admiration:  all that seemed lovely in her, when he knew no more of her than that she was young and beautiful, was now heightened in his eyes almost to divine, by that virtuous pride which shewed him some part of her more charming mind.  What he extremely liked before, he now almost adored; and having, by the loose manner in which the count had mentioned these two English ladies, imagined them women of not over-rigid principles, now finding his mistake, at least as concerning one of them, was so much ashamed and angry with himself for having been the cause of that disorder he was witness of, that he for some moments was equally at a loss to appease, as she who felt was to express it.

But being the first that recovered presence of mind; madame, I beseech you, said he, involve not the innocent with the guilty:—­I acknowledge you have reason to resent the boldness of the count; but I am no otherwise a sharer in his crime than in reporting it; and if you knew the pain it gave my heart while I complied with the promise I was unhappily betrayed into, I am sure you would forgive the misdemeanor of my tongue.

Sir, answered she, I can easily forgive the slight opinion one so much a stranger to me as yourself may have of me; but monsieur the count has been a constant visitor to the lady I am with, ever since our arrival at Venice; and am very certain he never found any thing in my behaviour to him or any other person, which could justly encourage him to send me such a message:—­a message, indeed, equally affrontive to himself, since it shews him a composition of arrogance, vanity, perfidy, and every thing that is contemptible in man.—­This, sir, is the reply I send him, and desire you to tell him withal, that if he persists in giving me any farther trouble of this nature, I shall let him know my sense of it in the presence of Melanthe.

Monsieur du Plessis then assured her he would be no less exact in delivering what she said, than he had been in the observance of his promise to the other, and conjured her to believe he should do it with infinite more satisfaction.  He then made use of so many arguments to prove, that a man of honour ought not to falsify his word, tho’ given to an unworthy person, that she was at last won to forgive his having undertaken to mention any thing to her of the nature he had done.

Indeed, the agitations she had been in were more owing to the vexation that monsieur du Plessis was the person employed, than that the count had the boldness to apply to her in this manner; but the submission she found herself treated with by the former, convincing her that he had sentiments very different from those the other had entertained of her, rendered her more easy, and she not only forgave his share in the business which had brought him there, but also permitted him to repeat his visits, on condition he never gave her any cause to suspect the mean opinion the count had of her conduct had any influence on him.