And so 1 do: but you love him, madam, with a hope that no one else will have reason to entertain Dear, now place a little confidence in your Emily: my guardian shall never know it from me, by the least hint. I beg you will own it. You can’t think how you will oblige me. Your confidence in me will give me importance with myself.

Will you, Emily, be as frank-hearted with me, as you would have me be with you?

Indeed I will.

I do, my dear, greatly esteem your guardian.

Esteem! Is that the word? Is that the ladies’ word for love? And is not the word love a pretty word for women? I mean no harm by it, I am sure.

And I am sure you cannot mean harm: I will be sincere with my Emily. But you must not let any one living know what I say to you of this nature. I would prefer your guardian, my dear, to a king, in all his glory.

And so, madam, would I, if I were you. I should be glad to be thought like you in every thing.

Amiable innocence! But tell me, Miss Jervois, Would you not have me esteem your guardian? You know he was my guardian too, and that at an exigence when I most wanted one.

Indeed I would. Would you have me wish such a good young lady as Miss Byron to be ungrateful? No, indeed. And again she sighed.

Why then sighed my Emily? You said you would be frank — hearted.

So I will, madam. But I really can’t tell why I sighed then. I wish my guardian to be the happiest f2 man in the world: I wish you, madam, to be the happiest woman: and how can either be so, but in one another? But I am grieved, I believe, that there seems to be something in the way of your mutual happiness 1 don’t know whether that is all, neither I don’t know what it is If I did, I would tell you But I have such throbs sometimes at my heart, as make me fetch my breath hard I don’t know what it is Such a weight here, as makes me sigh; and I have a pleasure, I think, because I have an ease in sighing What can it be?

Go on, my dear: you are a pretty describer.

Why now, if any-body, as Anne did last time my guardian came hither, were to run up stairs, in an hurry; and to say Miss, miss, miss, your guardian is come! I should be in such a flutter my heart would seem to be too big for my bosom. 1 should sit down as much out of breath, as if 1 had run down a high hill. And, for half an hour, may be, so trem-ble, that I should not be able to see the dear guar — dian that perhaps I had wanted to see. And to hear him with a voice of gentleness, as if he pitied me for having so unhappy a mother, call me his Emily. Don’t you think he has a sweet voice? And your voice, too, madam, is also so sweet Every body says, that even in your common speech your voice is me-lody. Now Anne says my agreeable little flatterer!