Lady L. By all means. Pray, Dr. Bartlett, do you know what my brother’s opinion is of Miss Byron?

Dr. B. The highest that man can have of woman.

Lady L. As we are so very desirous to see my brother happily married, and think he never could have a woman so likely to make him happy, would you advise us to propose the alliance to him? We would not to her, unless we thought there were room to hope for his approbation, and that in a very high degree.

Dr. B. I am under some concern, my dear ladies, to be thought to know more of your brother’s heart, than sisters do, whom he loves so dearly, and who equally love him. I beseech you, give me not so much more consequence with him than you imagine you have yourselves. I shall be afraid, if you do, that the favour I wish to stand in with you, is owing more to your brother’s distinction of me, than to your own hearts.

Lord L. I see not why we may not talk to my brother directly on this head. Whence is it, that we are all three insensibly drawn in, by each other’s example, to this distance between him and us? It is not his fault. Did we ever ask him a question, that he did not directly answer, and that without shewing the least affectation or reserve?

Miss Gr. He came over to us all at once so per-fect, after an eight or nine years absence, with so much power, and such a will to do us good, that we were awed into a kind of reverence for him.

Lady L. Too great obligations from one side, will indeed create distance on the other. Grateful hearts will always retain v a sense of favours heaped upon them.

Dr. B. You would give pain to his noble heart, did he think, that you put such a value upon what he has done I do assure you, that he thinks he has hardly performed his duty by his sisters: and, as occasions may still offer, you will Jind he thinks so. But let me beg of you to treat him without reserve or diffidence; and that you would put to him all those questions which you would wish to be an-swered. You will find him, I dare say, very candid, and very explicit.

Miss Gr. That shall be my task, when I next see him. Rut, dear Doctor Bartlett, if you love us, communicate to us all that is proper for us to see, of the correspondence that passes between him and you.

The doctor, it seems, bowed; but answered not.