I threw my arms about her neck. She fervently teturned the sisterly embrace. We separated; she retiring at one door, in order to go up to replace the letter; 1 at the other, to re-consider all that had passed on the occasion. And I hope 1 shall love her the better for taking so kindly a behaviour so contrary to what her own had been.

Well, but, don’t you congratulate me, my dear, on my escape from my curiosity? I am sure my grandmamma, and my aunt, will be pleased with their girl. Yet it was a hard struggle, I own: in the suspense I am in; a very hard struggle. But though wishes will play about my heart, that I knew such of the contents as it might concern me to know; yet I am infinitely better pleased that I yielded not to the temptation, than I should have been if 1 had. And then, methinks, my pride is gratified in the superiority this lady ascribes to me over herself, whom so lately I thought greatly my superior.

Yet what merit have I in this? Since if I had considered only rules of policy, I should have been utterly wrong, had I yielded to the temptation: for what use could I have made of any knowledge I might have obtained by this means? If any proposal is to be made me, of what nature soever, it must, in that case, have appeared to be quite new to me: and what an affectation must that have oc-casioned, what dissimulation, in your Harriet? And how would a creature, educated as I have been, have behaved under such trials as might have arisen from a knowledge so faultily obtained?

And had I been discovered; had 1 given cause of suspicion, either to Dr. Bartlett, or Sir Charles; I should have appeared as the principal in the fact: it would have been mean to accuse MissGrandison, as the tempter, in a temptation yielded to with my eyes open. And should I not have cast a slur upon that curiosity which Dr. Bartlett before had not re —^1 fused to gratify, as well as shut myself out from all future communications and confidence?

It is very possible, besides, that, unused as I have been to artifice and disguise, I should have betrayed myself; especially had I found any of the contents of the letter very affecting.

Thus you see, Lucy, that policy, as well as rec-titude of manners, justifies me: and in this parti — cular I am an happy girl.

MissGrandison has just now told her sister what passed between us. Lady L. says, she would not have been Miss Grandison, in taking the letter, by what means soever come at; for how, said she, did I know what secrets there might be in it, before I read it? But I think verily, when it kad been got at, and oflPered me, I could not have been Miss Hyron.