We shall see many pleasant days yet, my Olivia." "Ah! never, sir, never! The rest of my wretched life must be infamy abroad, and shame at home. But alas! papa, you look much paler than you used to do. Could such a thing as I am give you so much uneasiness? surely you have too much wisdom to take the miseries of my guilt upon yourself!" "Our wisdom, young woman—" replied I. "Ah! why so cold a name, papa?" cried she, "this is the first time you ever called me by so cold a name." "I ask pardon, my darling," returned I; "but I was going to observe, that wisdom makes but a slow defence against trouble, though at last a sure one." The landlady now returned to know if we did not choose a more genteel apartment; to which assenting, we were shown to a room where we could converse more freely. After we had talked ourselves into some tranquillity, I could not avoid desiring some account of the gradations that led to her present wretched situation. "That villain, sir," said she, "from the first day of our meeting, made me honourable though private proposals." "Villain, indeed!" cried I; "and yet it in some measure surprises me how a person of Mr. Burchell's good sense and seeming honour could be guilty of such deliberate baseness, and thus step into a family to undo it." "My dear papa," returned my daughter, "you labour under a strange mistake. Mr. Burchell never attempted to deceive me. Instead of that, he took every opportunity of privately admonishing me against the artifices of Mr. Thornhill, who, I now find, was even worse than he represented him." "Mr. Thornhill!" interrupted I, "can it be?" "Yes, sir," returned she, "it was Mr. Thornhill who seduced me; who employed the two ladies, as he called them, but who in fact were abandoned women of the town without breeding or pity, to decoy us up to London. Their artifices, you may remember, would certainly have succeeded, but for Mr. Burchell's letter, who directed those reproaches at them which we all applied to ourselves. How he came to have so much influence as to defeat their intentions, still remains a secret to me; but I am convinced he was ever our warmest, sincerest friend." "You amaze me, my dear," cried I; "but now I find my first suspicions of Mr. Thornhill's baseness were too well grounded: but he can triumph in security; for he is rich and we are poor. But tell me, my child; sure it was no small temptation that could thus obliterate all the impressions of such an education and so virtuous a disposition as thine?"