Merceda is in a still more dangerous way.  Besides his bruises, and a fractured skull, he has, it seems, a wound in his thigh, which, in the delirium he was thrown into by the fracture, was not duly attended to; and which, but for his valiant struggles against the knife which gave the wound, was designed for a still greater mischief.  His recovery is despaired of; and the poor wretch is continually offering up vows of penitence and reformation, if his life may be spared.

Bagenhall was the person who had seduced, by promises of marriage, and fled for it, the manufacturer’s daughter of Abbeville.  He was overtaken by his pursuers at Douay.  The incensed father, and friends of the young woman, would not be otherwise pacified than by his performing his promise; which, with infinite reluctance, he complied with, principally through the threats of the brother, who is noted for his fierceness and resolution; and who once made the sorry creature feel an argument which greatly terrified him.  Bagenhall is at present at Abbeville, living as well as he can with his new wife, cursing his fate, no doubt, in secret.  He is obliged to appear fond of her before her brother and father; the latter being also a sour man, a Gascon, always boasting of his family, and valuing himself upon a De, affixed by himself to his name, and jealous of indignity offered to it.  The fierce brother is resolved to accompany his sister to England, when Bagenhall goes thither, in order, as he declares, to secure to her good usage, and see her owned and visited by all Bagenhall’s friends and relations.  And thus much of these fine gentlemen.

How different a man is Beauchamp!  But it is injuring him, to think of those wretches and him at the same time.  He certainly has an eye to Emily, but behaves with great prudence towards her:  yet every body but she sees his regard for her:  nobody but her guardian runs in her head; and the more, as she really thinks it is a glory to love him, because of his goodness.  Every body, she says, has the same admiration of him, that she has.

Mrs. Reeves desires me to acquaint you, that Miss Clements, having, by the death of her mother and aunt, come into a pretty fortune, is addressed to by a Yorkshire gentleman of easy circumstances, and is preparing to leave the town, having other connexions in that county; but that she intends to write to you before she goes, and to beg you to favour her with now and then a letter.

I think Miss Clements is a good sort of young woman:  but I imagined she would have been one of those nuns at large, who need not make vows of living and dying aunt Eleanors, or Lady Gertrudes; all three of them good honest souls! chaste, pious, and plain.  It is a charming situation, when a woman is arrived at such a height of perfection, as to be above giving or receiving temptation.  Sweet innocents!  They have my reverence, if not my love.  How would they be affronted, if I were to say pity!—­I think only of my two good aunts, at the present writing.  Miss Clements, you know, is a youngish woman; and I respect her much.  One would not jest upon the unsightliness of person, or plainness of feature:  but think you she will not be one of those, who twenty years hence may put in a boast of her quondam beauty?