to predict her suspicions spoke from his own guilty conscience--spoke as the kidnapper and secret imprisoner. We pray attention to the remarkable expressions with which the following quotation closes:-- "May not an artful woman impose on one in such circumstances, and whose mind cannot yet be very firm? And this is the more to be feared, because at the beginning of her illness the sister said loudly, and oftener than once to Lord Grange himself, that her husband's bad usage had turned her [Lady Mar] mad. Supposing, then, the sister tell and persuade her to this purpose: 'You see your husband's friends quite neglect you. Lord Erskine, though in the place, seldom comes near you. How easy were it for Lord Grange to have made you a visit on hearing you are so well. Surely it became the fellow to pay you that regard, and he would have done it had he any kindness for you; and, if the husband had, he would have laid such commands on his son and brother which they could not have resisted. Now, you may get your freedom, but can you again trust yourself in their hands? Quite separated from your father's and mother's friends, and from your country, _locked up in Scotland or foreign parts, and wholly in their power_, what can you expect? Your friends here could give you no relief, and you should be wholly at the barbarous mercy of those whose sense get not sufficiently the better of their hatred or contempt, as to make them carry with seeming respect to you till they get you in their power. _What will they not do when they have you?_"[30] Such are Lord Grange's "imaginary conversations" of Lady Mary Wortley--like many others, a more accurate reflection of the thoughts habitually dwelling in the writer's own mind, than of those of the person in whose name they are uttered. And then, in continuation, he paints the formidable effect of the imaginary pleading--"Such things to a woman so lately of a disturbed brain, constantly inculcated by so near a relation whom she only sees, and her creatures, and depends on her entirely for the time--what may they not produce? And if they have their effect, then the consequences are these: the lady being at freedom legally, but _de facto_ still under her sister's absolute government, the bargain about her jointure becomes void, and thereby she (or rather the sister) gets more by £500 sterling yearly, and our friend has nothing at all." Then follows the statement about the lease; and the meaning of the whole is, that Lady Mar, as a free woman, would be entitled to live with her sister, and dispose of her own property, unless she were put in the "right hands" to make her "ratify" any desired bargain.