My brother did not ask me.  He did not expect it.  He gives every body their choice, you know.  He told me last night who were to dine with him to-day, and supposed I would choose to dine with Lady L——­, or with you, he was so free as to say.

He did us an honour, which you thought too great a one.  But if he had asked you, Charlotte—­

Then I should have bridled.  Indeed, I asked him, if he did not over-do it?

What was his answer?

Perhaps he might—­But I, said he, may never see Mrs. Oldham again.  I want to inform myself of her future intentions, with a view (over-do it again, Charlotte!) to make her easy and happy for life.  Her children are in the world.  I want to give her a credit that will make her remembered by them, as they grow up, with duty.  I hope I am superior to forms.  She is conscious.  I can pity her.  She is a gentlewoman; and entitled to a place at any man’s table to whom she never was a servant.  She never was mine.

And what, Miss Grandison, could you say in answer? asked I.

What!—­Why I put up my lip.

Ungracious girl!

I can’t help it.  That may become a man to do in such cases as this, that would not a woman.

Sir Charles wants not delicacy, my dear, said I.

He must suppose, that I should have sat swelling, and been reserved:  he was right not to ask me—­So be quiet, Harriet—­And yet, perhaps, you would be as tame to a husband’s mistress, as you seem favourable to a father’s.

She then put on one of her arch looks—­

The cases differ, Charlotte—­But do you know what passed between the generous man, and the mortified woman and her children; mortified as they must be by his goodness?

Yes, yes; I had curiosity enough to ask Dr. Bartlett about it all.

Pray, Charlotte—­

Dr. Bartlett is favourable to every body, sinners as well as saints—­He began with praising the modesty of her dress, the humility of her behaviour:  he said, that she trembled and looked down, till she was reassured by Sir Charles.  Such creatures have all their tricks, Harriet.

You, Charlotte, are not favourable to sinners, and hardly to saints.  But pray proceed.

Why, he re-assured the woman, as I told you.  And then proceeded to ask many questions of the elder Oldham—­I pitied that young fellow—­to have a mother in his eye, whose very tenderness to the young ones kept alive the sense of her guilt.  And yet what would she have been, had she not been doubly tender to the innocents, who were born to shame from her fault?  The young man acknowledged a military genius; and Sir Charles told him, that he would, on his return from a journey he was going to take, consider whether he could not do him service in the way he chose.  He gave him, it seems, a brief lecture on what he should aim to be, and what avoid, to qualify himself for a man of true honour; and spoke very handsomely of such gentlemen of the army as are real gentlemen.  The young fellow, continued Miss Grandison, may look upon himself to be as good as provided for, since my brother never gives the most distant hope that is not followed by absolute certainty, the first opportunity, not that offers, but which he can make.