7

sunk ;

first glance of her ladyship my heart her haughty and forbidding countenance, her austere and formal manners, seemed to say that any degree of comfort was incompatible with dependence upon her. I had, however, the good, or rather the ill fortune to please her, and I agreed to remove to her house the following week.

"When the Misses Cheslyn found that I intended to leave them, they were equally mortified and surprised; they made, however, no efforts to prevent my departure, and the following week saw me the inmate of Lady Diana Douglas.

"I soon found that I had engaged myself in a mode of life of all others the most repugnant to my feelings; I was the slave of a haughty and capricious woman, who treated me indeed with the ceremonious politeness which she thought due to me as a gentlewoman, but, at the same time, with a formality

She

and austerity, that no being who possessed more animation than an automaton could patiently submit to. was of a very retired and domestic turn, and rarely partook of any public amusements; but when she did, I always accompanied her. The restraint. under which I lived preyed upon my health, and I was sinking fast into a state of despondency, when an incident occurred that awakened me to feelings equally new and delightful,

"Her ladyship had a favourite nephew, whom I had heard her speak of as a very promising young man; her sentiments and mine, however, were too dissimilar for me to pay any attention to the encomiums she lavished upon him; but when I saw him, I was compelled to own that they were just. Graceful, elegant, and insinuating, he concealed the most brilliant talents under an unassuming suavity of manners, that rendered him at once respected and beloved...

"He dined with us on the day that I first saw him; and Lady Diana, who was in unusual spirits, behaved to him with more kindness than I thought she had been capable of shewing: he once or twice called a frown into her countenance by being rather too attentive to me; but when he saw that his civilities drew upon me some unpleasant looks from his aunt, he ceased to regard me, and attended wholly to her.

"For some months he passed several hours daily at her ladyship's house; and every interview added to the interest with which he had inspired me. When I listened to those brilliant sallies of wit that flowed from his lips; when I contemplated the benevolence that glowed in his expressive countenance, I regarded him as almost a superior being, and a passion the most fatal to my repose stole into my bosom under the guise of esteem and admiration.

"Mr. Pembroke depended wholly on his uncle, Lord Robert Douglas, who

had promised to make him his heir, and who behaved to him in every respect but one with the kindness of a father; that one was a positive stipulation on the part of Lord Robert, that Percival should never marry without his consent, which he declared he would never give to his uniting himself to any woman who was not of noble blood; money was not so much his lordship's object, but birth was indispensible; and Pembroke saw, that if he ever married, he would probably be obliged to give his hand rather in obedience to the dictates of ambition than affection.

"He took every opportunity, in the absence of Lady Diana, to endeavour to give me that consequence with myself which she sedulously laboured to deprive me of; and a succession of those little delicate attentions which, as one of our favourite authors expresses it, "are neither so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as to be misunderstood," began by slow degrees to open my eyes as

to the nature of his sentiments for me. How did my heart throb with transport when I first ventured to think that he loved me; but the impossibility of our union soon chaced the delightful vision which, for a few moments, I had indulged; and I awoke to sober reflection and to real misery.

"Lady Diana had for some time been menaced with an attack of the gout, and it had rendered her unusually peevish; she began to lay aside the ceremonious politeness with which she had at first treated me, and at times she behaved with a degree of capricious rudemess that hurt me inconceivably. Mr. Pembroke saw and sympathized in my sufferings; and one day that he had witnessed her treating me with more than usual severity, he abruptly left the room. I saw by the change in his countenance, and the glance of disdain which he cast at her ladyship, how feelingly sensible he was of her insolent tyranny.