Forgive you, my Charlotte! I do. But can you say, that you came not honestly by that letter, and yet forgive yourself? But, my dear Miss Grandison, instantly replace it; and do you watch over me, like a true friend, if in a future hour of weakness you shoqld find me desirous to know any of the contents of a. paper so naughtily come at. I own that I had like to have been overcome: and if I had, all the information it would have given me, could never have recompensed me for what I should have suf-fered in my own opinion, when 1 reflected on the means by which I had obtained it.

Superior creature! how you shame me! I will re-place the letter. And I promise you, that if I can — not forget the contents of it myself (and yet they are glorious to my brother) I will never mention any of them to you; unless the letter be fairly communicated to you, and to us all.

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?