Things were in this train, when, one morning, the usual party being met in the boudoir, Lady St Edmunds was called away to receive a visiter. She went without ceremony; for she never reminded me of our difference of rank, by any of those correct formalities by which the great are accustomed to distance their inferiors. She gaily enjoined Lord Frederick to entertain me; and he accepted of the office with a look which prompted me, I know not why, to move hastily towards a harp, on which I struck some chords. Lord Frederick stopped me; addressing me so much more seriously than he had ever done before, that, in my surprise, I suffered him to proceed without interruption. In the warmest phrase of passion he besought me to tell him how long I meant to continue his lingering probation; and protested, that he was no longer able to endure my delays. The presumptuousness of this language was softened by tones and gestures so humble, that I found it impossible to be angry! but I was not a little confounded at a security which I had been far from intending to authorise. Recovering myself as well as I was able, I affected to receive his protestations in jest, telling him his gallantries were now so hackneyed, that I had already exhausted all my wit in replying to them; and that if he wished to find me at all entertaining, he must positively call a new subject. His Lordship abated nothing of his solemnity. He fell upon his knees, conjured me to be serious, and talked of as many cruelties, racks, and tortures, as would have furnished the dungeons of the Inquisition; yet still the drift of his rhetoric seemed to be only this, that he had now been for a very competent time the martyr of my charms, and therefore was entitled to claim his reward. Though somewhat alarmed, I still tried to laugh off the attack; telling him that he had changed his manner much to the worse, since gravity in him seemed the most preposterous thing in nature. 'Was it possible,' Lord Frederick enquired with a tragedy exclamation, 'that I could thus punish him for a disguise of gaiety which he had assumed only to mislead indifferent eyes, but which he was certain had never deceived my penetration?' And then he boldly appealed to my candour, 'whether I had ever for a moment misunderstood him?' Too much startled and confounded to persevere in my levity, I replied in the words of simple truth, 'that I had never bestowed any consideration upon his meaning, since my father had settled the matter.'