thing he had always condemned in his own mind, and looked upon as most ungenerous and base:—­besides, though he had made his addresses to Laetitia, meerly because he imagined she would prove a virtuous, obedient, and fruitful wife, and was not inflamed with any of those sentiments for her which are called love; yet, designing to marry her, he had set himself as much as possible to love her, and had really excited in his heart a kind of a tenderness, which made him unable to resolve on giving her the mortification of being forsaken, without feeling great part of the pain he was about to inflict on her.

All he now wished was, that she might be possessed of as little warmth of inclination for him as he had known for her, and that the disparity of years between them, might have made her consent to the proposed marriage, intirely on the motive of interest, without any mixture of love, in order that the disappointment she was going to receive, might seem the less severe:  as the regard he had for her made him earnestly wish this might be the case, he carefully recollected all the passages of her behaviour, her looks, her words, nay, the very accents of her voice, were re-examined, in hope to find some tokens of that happy indifference, which alone could make him easy in this affair; but all this retrospect afforded him no more than uncertain conjectures, and imaginations which frequently contradicted each other, and indeed served only to increase his doubts, and add to his disquiets.

The mourning for his brother was, however, a very plausible pretence for delaying the marriage; and as he was willing the disappointment should come on by degrees, thinking by that means to soften the asperity of it, he contrived to let both father and daughter have room to guess the event before hand.—­He seldom went to their house, and when he did, made very short visits, talked as if the necessity of his affairs would oblige him to leave the country, and settle again entirely in town:—­rather avoided, than sought any opportunity of speaking to Laetitia in private, and in all his words and actions, discovered a coldness which could not but be very surprizing to them both, though they took not the least notice that they were so before him, but behaved towards him in the same manner, as when he appeared the most full of affection.

This was a piece of prudence Natura had not expected from persons of their low education and way of life:—­he had imagined, that either the one or the other of them would have upbraided this change in him, and by avowing a suspicion, that he had repented him of his promises, given him an opportunity either of seeming to resent it, or by some other method, of breaking off:  but this way of proceeding frustrated his measures in that point, and he found himself under a necessity of speaking first, on a subject no less disagreeable to himself, than he knew it would be to those to whom his discourse should be directed.