upon her bosom, to weep, to unfold to her the inmost recesses of my mind—that ingenuous mind, which languished for communication, and preyed upon itself! Dear and cruel friend, why did you transfix my heart with the barbed and envenomed arrow, and then refuse to administer the only healing balsam? My visits to Mrs Harley became less frequent; I shut myself up whole days in my apartment, at Morton Park, or wandered through its now leafless groves, absorbed in meditation—fostering the sickly sensibility of my soul, and nursing wild, improbable, chimerical, visions of felicity, that, touched by the sober wand of truth, would have 'melted into thin air.' 'The more desires I have' (observes an acute, and profound French Philosopher4) 'the less ardent they are. The torrents that divide themselves into many branches are the least dangerous in their course. A strong passion is a solitary passion, that concentrates all our desires within one point.' 4 4: Helvetius. CHAPTER XIX I had not seen my friend for many days, when, on a dark and stormy night, in the month of January, between nine and ten o'clock, the family at Morton Park were alarmed, by a loud and violent knocking at the hall door. On opening it, a servant appeared—and a chaise, the porter having unbolted the great gates, drew up to the door. The man delivered a note addressed to Miss Courtney. I was unacquainted with the handwriting, and unfolded it with trepidation. It contained but a few lines, written in a female character, and signed with the name of a lady, who resided about twelve miles from Morton Park, at whose house Mrs Harley sometimes made a visit of a few days. It stated— 'That my friend was seized at the mansion of this lady with an apoplectic fit, from which she had been restored, after some hours of insensibility: that the physicians were apprehensive of a relapse, and that Mrs Harley had expressed a desire of seeing Miss Courtney—A carriage and servants were sent for her conveyance.' Mr Morton was from home, his lady made no offer of any of her own domestics to accompany me. Montague, who had been at the Park for some days past, solicited permission to be my escort. I hesitated a moment, and would willingly have declined this proposal, but he repeated and enforced it with a vehemence, that, in the present hurried state of my mind, I had not spirits to oppose. Shocked, alarmed, distressed, I wrapped a shawl
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