‘Suppose, madam,’ said he, ’it should not be in my power to restrain my wishes in those bounds prescribed by you, to all who have the happiness of conversing with you; and that I were encroaching enough not to be content with the marks of friendship you are pleased to honour me’:—­’in fine,’ continued he, ’suppose I were guilty of the very same presumption, you have so severely censured in the councellor!’

‘That is impossible,’ replied she, ’since you are a foe professed to marriage, as well as myself’;—­she was about to add something more, but was prevented by emotions, which she attempted, but in vain, to conceal; and Natura saw enough to keep him from despairing he had forfeited her esteem by aiming at her love.

Having thus made a beginning, it was easy for him to prosecute a suit, which he soon discovered he had a friend in her bosom to plead in favour of:—­in a word, he left her not, till he had obtained her permission to entertain her on the same theme, and to use his endeavours to prevail on her to exchange the friendship she confessed for him into a warmer passion.

It would be altogether needless to make any repetition of the particulars of this courtship; the reader will easily believe, that both parties being animated with the same sentiments I have described, it could not be very tedious;—­love had already done his work in their hearts, and required little the labour of the tongue.  Charlotte had entirely compleated every thing appertaining to her law-suit, yet she seemed not in a hurry to quit the town; a business of a more tender nature now detained her;—­she had resolved, or rather she could not help resolving, to give herself to Natura, and the shame of doing what she had so often, and so strenuously declared against, rendered the thoughts of returning into the country in a different state, from that with which she had left it, insupportable to her.

After having agreed to the sollicitations of her importunate lover, she expressed her sentiments to him on this head; on which it was concluded, that their nuptials should be solemnized as privately as possible in London, and that they should set out immediately after for his country seat, where Charlotte, being utterly a stranger, would not be subjected to any of those little railleries, she must have expected, in a place where every one knew of the aversion she had testified for a second marriage.

No cross accident intervening, what they designed was, in a short time, carried into execution;—­never were any pair united by more indelible bonds; those of friendship sublimed into the most pure and virtuous tenderness, and a parity of principles, humours, and inclinations.

Thus does passion triumph over the most seemingly fixed and determined resolution; and though it must be confessed, that in this instance, both had reason, from the real merits of the beloved object, to justify their choice, yet nature would certainly have had the same force, and worked the same effect, if excited only by meer fancy, and imaginary perfections.