this point; he met with a rebuff from Charlotte, which might have deterred some men from prosecuting a courtship she seemed determined never to encourage:  but though he was a little alarmed at it, he could not bring himself to think she was enough in earnest to make him desist:  in every visit he paid her, he interlarded his discourse on business with professions of love, which at length so much teized her, that she told him plainly, she would sooner suffer her cause to be lost, than suffer herself to be continually persecuted with sollicitations, which she had ever avoided since her widowhood, and ever should do so.

Natura came in one day just as the counsellor was going out of her apartment; he observed a great confusion in his face, and some emotions in her’s, which shewed her mind a little ruffled from that happy composure he was accustomed to find it in.  On his testifying the notice he took of this change in her countenance, ’It is strange thing,’ said she, ’that people will believe nothing in their own disfavour!—­I have told this man twenty times, that if I were disposed to think of a second marriage, which I do not believe I ever shall, the present sentiments I am possessed of, would never be reversed by any offer he could make me; yet will he still persist in his impertinent declarations.’

There needed no more to convince Natura he had a rival; nor, as he knew Charlotte had nothing of coquetry in her humour, to make him also know she was not pleased with having attracted the affections of this new admirer:  this gave him an inexpressible satisfaction; for tho’, as yet, he had never once thought of making any addresses to her on the score of love, death was not half so terrible to him, as the idea of her encouraging them from any other man.

‘Then, madam,’ cried he, looking on her in a manner she had never seen him do before, ’the councellor has declared a passion for you, and you have rejected him?’—­’is it possible?’—­’Possible!’ interrupted she, ’can you believe it possible I should not do so, knowing, as you do, the fixed aversion I have to entering into any second engagement!’—­’but were it less so,’ continued she, after a pause, ’his sollicitations would be never the more agreeable to me.’

Natura asked pardon for testifying any surprize, which he assured her was totally owing, either to this proof of the effect of her charms, ‘which,’ said he, ’are capable of far greater conquests; or to your refusal of the councellor’s offer, after the declarations you have made against a second marriage, but was excited in me meerly by the novelty of the thing, having heard nothing of it before.’

’This had not been among the number of the few things I conceal from you,’ answered she, ’if I had thought the repetition worthy of taking up any part of that time which I always pass with you on subjects more agreeable’;—­’besides,’ continued she, ’it was always my opinion, that those women, who talk of the addresses made to them, are secretly pleased with them in their hearts, and like the love, tho’ they may even despise the lover.  For my part, I can feel no manner of satisfaction in relating to others, what I had rather be totally ignorant of myself.’