morning I went into my father’s study, and found him very much out of humour:  he had spent the evening at the coffee-house, as he frequently did, and generally came home in a bad humour from thence.  I went from him into the parlour where I found Mr. Cranstoun:  he insisted upon knowing what was the matter, I appearing to him to have been lately in tears:  I told him the whole affair.  He replied, “I hate he should go to that house, he always comes home from thence in a very ill humour.”  I had made the tea, and got up to fetch some sugar, which was in a glass scrutore at the farther end of the room; and when I rose up, Mr. Cranstoun said to me, “I will now put in some of the powder—­upon my soul it will not hurt him.”  My father was in his study at the time these words were spoken.  I made answer, “Don’t do it, Cranstoun; it will make me uneasy, and can do you no good.”  To this he replied, “It can do no hurt, and therefore I will mix it.”  After I had got the sugar, I returned to the tea-table, and was going to throw away the tea, in which Mr. Cranstoun had put some of the powder; but my father came in that moment, and prevented me from executing my design.  My father seemed very much out of humour all breakfast-time; and, soon after breakfast was over, retired to his study.  Mr. Cranstoun and I then took a walk.  At dinner my father appeared in the best of humours, and continued so all the time Mr. Cranstoun stayed with him.  Mr. Cranstoun and I used to walk out every day.  On one of those days, Mr. Cranstoun told me he had a secret to impart to me, and begg’d me not to be angry with him for it; adding, he knew I had too much good sense to be so.  The secret in short was this:  he had had a daughter by one Miss Capel, a year before he knew me; and, as he pretended, all his friends had insisted upon his telling me of it.  To this I replied, “Your follies, Cranstoun, have been very great; but I hope you see them.”  “That I do,” said he, “with penitence and shame.”  “Then, sir,” replied I, “I freely forgive you; but never shall, if you repeat these follies now after our acquaintance.”  “If I do,” said he, “I must be a villain; you alone can make me happy in this world; and, by following your example, I hope I shall be happy in the next.”  Mr. Cranstoun gave my father the powder in August 1750, and stayed with him in Henley, as I believe, till some day in the beginning of November, the same year.  A day or two after the preceding dialogue, one morning I got, up, and asked my maid, “How Mr. Cranstoun did?” Who answered, “He is gone out a walking, Madam.”  Upon this, I, as soon as I was drest, went up into Mr. Cranstoun’s room, to look out his linnen for my maid to mend.  I could not find it on the table, where it used to lie; and seeing a key in his trunk, I opened it.  The first thing I found there was a letter from a hand I knew not, tho’ he used always to give me his letters to open, and that unasked by me.  This I opened to read, and found it to come from a woman he kept.  Having read it,