to save you from inconveniences which you may perhaps be very innocently entailing on yourself."

Emma coloured and felt quite astonished at this address, the purport of which she could not guess, but after a moment's hesitation, she begged Mr. Bridge to proceed without ceremony; if he had any censure to bestow on her, she would listen and feel obliged.

"It is not censure, it is only a caution I wish to give you—I mean with regard to your intimacy with Mr. Morgan: you probably do not know his character, nor is it necessary that you should learn minute particulars; I am sure it will be enough for you to hear that he is not a safe companion for a young woman of your age and appearance."

"I think you must be under some misapprehension," replied Emma surprised; "there is nothing between us which can warrant the appellation of intimacy. He visits my sister-in-law, and as her visitor only I have known him."

"I had hoped," replied Mr. Bridge gravely, "to have met with more candour from you; I am under a very great mistake, if you have not on several occasions met him when walking only with that little girl, and allowed him to walk with you for a long time. Is it not so?"

"That is perfectly true—but the meetings were quite accidental," said Emma.

"So far as you were concerned, I can believe it; but the world will only know that you were seen walking tête-à-tête with a man of known bad principles and immoral conduct; and more than that, he has been found with you in the drawing-room alone, and you have passed many hours in his company when visiting in other houses."

tête-à-tête

"I was not aware," said Emma, perfectly astonished at the charge; "that my actions could have thus been the subject of comment and inspection; but what you say, though perfectly true in itself, is capable of a very different interpretation—will you listen to my defence?"

"Certainly, my dear child," replied he, pleased at the frank and respectful manner with which she addressed him.

"I met Mr. Morgan at Mr. Millar's, and there I saw him received into the society of respectable women—he visited at my sister-in-law's house, and was, evidently, in her confidence; he proposed to her to procure me a situation as governess to Lady Fanny Allston's little girl, and my brother perfectly approved of the negotiation. It was the interest he took in 

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