-The dear girl rejoiced in my assurances, and promised grateful love to the latest hour of her life.

Indeed, madam, I have a grateful heart, said she, for all I am so unhappy in a certain relation. I have none of those sort of faults that give me a resemblance in any way to my poor mother. But how shall I make out what I say? you will mistrust me, I fear: you will be apt to doubt my principles. But will you promise to take my heartrin your hand, and guide it as you please? Indeed it is an honest one. I wish you saw it through and through. If ever I do a wrong thing, mistrust my head, if you please, but not my heart. But in every thing I will be directed by you; and then my head will be as right as my heart.

I told her that good often resulted from evil. It was a happy thing perhaps for both, that her mo-ther’s visit had been made. Look upon me, my dear Emily, as your entire friend. We will have but one heart between us.

Let me add, Lucy, that if you find me capable of drawing this sweet girl into confessions of her infant love, and of making ungenerous advantage of them, though the event were to be fatal to my peace if I did not; I now call upon all you, my dear friends, to despise and renounce the treacherous friend in Harriet Byron.

She besought me to let her write to me; to let her come to me for advice, as often as she wanted it, whether here, in my dressing-room, or chamber, or at Mr. Reeves’s, when I went from Colnebrook.

I consented very cheerfully, and at her request, (for indeed, said she, I would not be an intruder for the world) promised, by a nod at her entrance, to let her know, if she came when I was busy, that she must retire, and come another time.

You are too young a lady, added she, to be called my mamma Alas! I have never a mamma, you know: but I will love you, and obey you, on the holding up of your finger, as I would my mother, were she as good as you.

Does not the beautiful simplicity of this charming girl affect you, Lucy? But her eyes swimming in tears, her earnest looks, her throbbing bosom, her hands now clasped about me, now in one ano-ther, added such graces to what she said, that it is impossible to do justice to it: and yet I am affected as I write.

Indeed, her calamity has given her an absolute possession of my heart. I, who had such good pa-rents, and have had my loss of them so happily al leviated, and even supplied, by a grandmamma and an aunt so truly maternal, as well as by the love of every one to whom 1 have the happiness to be re-lated; how unworthy of such blessings should I be, if I did not know how to pity a poor girl, who must reckon a living mother as her heaviest misfortune! k2