as it lists.—­Would to God!’ said she, ’the dear girl had the small-pox in a mortifying manner:  she’d be lovely though in the genteelness of her person and the excellencies of her mind; and more out of danger of suffering from the transcient beauties of countenance.  Yet I think,’ added she, ’she might be safe and happy under Mrs. Jervis’s care; and if you marry, and your lady parts with Mrs. Jervis, let ’em go together, and live as they like.  I think that will be the best for both.  And you have a generous spirit enough:  I will not direct you in the quantum.  But, my dear son, remember that I am the less concerned, that I have not done for the poor girl myself, because I depend upon you:  the manner how fitly to provide for her, has made me defer it till now, that I have so much more important concerns on my hands; life and strength ebbing so fast, that I am hardly fit for any thing, or to wish for any thing, but to receive the last releasing stroke.’”

Here he stopped, being under some concern himself, and we in much more.  At last he resumed the subject.

“You will too naturally think, my lord—­and you, my good ladies—­that the mind must be truly diabolical, that could break through the regard due to the solemn injunctions of a dying parent.  They did hold me a good while indeed; and as fast as I found any emotions of a contrary nature rise in my breast, I endeavoured for some time to suppress them, and to think and act as I ought; but the dear bewitching girl every day rose in her charms upon me:  and finding she still continued the use of her pen and ink, I could not help entertaining a jealousy, that she was writing to somebody who stood well in her opinion; and my love for her, and my own spirit of intrigue, made it a sweetheart of course.  And I could not help watching her emotions; and seeing her once putting a letter she had just folded up, into her bosom, at my entrance into my mother’s dressing-room, I made no doubt of detecting her, and her correspondent; and so I took the letter from her stays, she trembling and curtseying with a sweet confusion:  and highly pleased I was to find it contained only innocence and duty to the deceased mistress, and the loving parents, expressing her joy that, in the midst of her grief for losing the one, she was not obliged to return to be a burden to the other; and I gave it her again, with words of encouragement, and went down much better satisfied than I had been with her correspondence.

“But when I reflected upon the innocent simplicity of her style, I was still more in love with her, and formed a stratagem, and succeeded in it, to come at her other letters, which I sent forward, after I had read them, all but three or four, which I kept back, when my plot began to ripen for execution; although the little slut was most abominably free with my character to her parents.