in future, form a tender engagement, tell me, that I shall receive the first intimation of it from yourself; and, in the assurance of your happiness, I will learn to forget my own.

'I aspire to no higher title than that of the most faithful of your friends, and the wish of becoming worthy of your esteem and confidence shall afford me a motive for improvement. I will learn of you moderation, equanimity, and self-command, and you will, perhaps, continue to afford me direction, and assistance, in the pursuit of knowledge and truth.

'I have laid down my pen, again and again, and still taken it up to add something more, from an anxiety, lest even you, of whose delicacy I have experienced repeated proofs, should misconstrue me.—"Oh! what a world is this!—into what false habits has it fallen! Can hypocrisy be virtue? Can a desire to call forth all the best affections of the heart, be misconstrued into something too degrading for expression?"6 But I will banish these apprehensions; I am convinced they are injurious.

6

'Yes!—I repeat it—I relinquish my pen with reluctance. A melancholy satisfaction, from what source I can scarcely define, diffuses itself through my heart while I unfold to you its emotions.—Write to me; be ingenuous; I desire, I call for, truth!

 'Emma.'

Emma.

5: Wolstonecraft's Rights of Woman.

6: Holcroft's Anna St Ives.

CHAPTER XXVI

I had not courage to make my friend a confident of the step I had taken; so wild, and so romantic, did it appear, even to myself—a false pride, a false shame, with-held me. I brooded in silence over the sentiment, that preyed on the bosom which cherished it. Every morning dawned with expectation, and every evening closed in disappointment. I walked daily to the post-office, with precipitate steps and a throbbing heart, to enquire for letters, but in vain; and returned slow, dejected, spiritless. Hope, one hour, animated my bosom and flushed my cheek; the next, pale despair shed its torpid influence through my languid frame. 

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