returning from his embassy in France, took me home with him, and carried me to a little pleasant country-house, where there was nothing grand or superfluous, but everything neat and agreeable. There I led a life perfectly solitary. At first the time hung very heavy on my hands, and I wanted all kind of employment, and I had very like to have fallen into the height of the vapors, from no other reason but from want of knowing what to do with myself. But when I had lived here a little time I found such a calmness in my mind, and such a difference between this and the restless anxieties I had experienced in a court, that I began to share the tranquillity that visibly appeared in everything round me. I set myself to do works of fancy, and to raise little flower-gardens, with many such innocent rural amusements; which, although they are not capable of affording any great pleasure, yet they give that serene turn to the mind which I think much preferable to anything else human nature is made susceptible of. I now resolved to spend the rest of my days here, and that nothing should allure me from that sweet retirement, to be again tossed about with tempestuous passions of any kind. Whilst I was in this situation, my lord Percy, the earl of Northumberland’s eldest son, by an accident of losing his way after a fox-chase, was met by my father, about a mile from our house; he came home with him, only with a design of dining with us, but was so taken with me that he stayed three days. I had too much experience in all affairs of this kind not to see presently the influence I had on him; but I was at that time so entirely free from all ambition, that even the prospect of being a countess had no effect on me; and I then thought nothing in the world could have bribed me to have changed my way of life. This young lord, who was just in his bloom, found his passion so strong, he could not endure a long absence, but returned again in a week, and endeavored, by all the means he could think of, to engage me to return his affection. He addressed me with that tenderness and respect which women on earth think can flow from nothing but real love; and very often told me that, unless he could be so happy as by his assiduity and care to make himself agreeable to me, although he knew my father would eagerly embrace any proposal from him, yet he would suffer that last of miseries of never seeing me more rather than owe his own happiness to anything that might be the least contradiction to my inclinations. This manner of proceeding had something in it so noble and generous, that by degrees it raised a sensation in me which I know not how to describe, nor by what name to call it: it was nothing like my former passion: for there was no turbulence, no uneasy waking nights attending it, but all I could with honor grant to oblige him appeared to me to be justly due to his truth and love, and more the effect of gratitude than of any desire of my own.