O, madam!  Where is he now?  God protect and guide my guardian, wherever he goes!  This is my prayer, first and last, and I can’t tell how often in the day.  I look for him in every place I have seen him in; [And pray tell me, madam, did not you do so when he had left us?] and when I can’t find him, I do so sigh!—­What a pleasure, yet what a pain, is there in sighing, when I think of him!  Yet I know I am an innocent girl.  And this I am sure of, that I wish him to be the husband of but one woman in the whole world; and that is you.  But then my next wish is—­You know what—­Ah, my Miss Byron! you must let me live with you and my guardian, if you should ever be Lady Grandison.

But here, madam, are sad doings sometimes, between Lord and Lady G——.  I am very angry at her often in my heart; yet I cannot help laughing, now and then, at her out-of-the-way sayings.  Is not her character a very new one?  Or are there more such young wives?  I could not do as she does, were I to be queen of the globe.  Every body blames her.  She will make my lord not love her, at last.  Don’t you think so?  And then what will she get by her wit?

***

Just this moment she came into my closet—­Writing, Emily? said she:  To whom?—­I told her.—­Don’t tell tales out of school, Emily.—­I was so afraid that she would have asked to see what I had written:  but she did not.  To be sure she is very polite, and knows what belongs to herself, and every body else:  To be ungenerous, as you once said, to her husband only, that is a very sad thing to think of.

Well, and I would give any thing to know if you think what I have written tolerable, before I go any farther:  But I will go on in this way, since I cannot do better.  Bad is my best; but you shall have quantity, I warrant, since you bid me write long letters.

But I have seen my mother:  it was but yesterday.  She was in a mercer’s shop in Covent Garden.  I was in Lord L——­’s chariot; only Anne was with me.  Anne saw her first.  I alighted, and asked her blessing in the shop:  I am sure I did right.  She blessed me, and called me dear love.  I stayed till she had bought what she wanted, and then I slid down the money, as if it were her own doing; and glad I was I had so much about me:  It came but to four guineas.  I begged her, speaking low, to forgive me for so doing:  And finding she was to go home as far as Soho, and had thoughts of having a hackney coach called; I gave Anne money for a coach for herself, and waited on my mother to her own lodgings; and it being Lord L——­’s chariot, she was so good as to dispense with my alighting.

She blessed my guardian all the way, and blessed me.  She said, she would not ask me to come to see her, because it might not be thought proper, as my guardian was abroad:  but she hoped, she might be allowed to come and see me sometimes.—­Was she not very good, madam?  But my guardian’s goodness makes every body good.—­O that my mamma had been always the same!  I should have been but too happy!