He had had a slight acquaintance with Mrs. Stafford when she was first married; and knew enough of her husband to be informed of the source of that dejection, which, through all her endeavours to conceal it, frequently appeared; and having lived always among those who consider attachments to married women as allowable gallantries, and having had but too much success among them, Fitz-Edward thought he could take advantage of Mrs. Stafford's situation, to entangle her in a connection which would make her more indulgent to the weakness of her friend for Delamere. But such was the awful, yet simple dignity of her manner, and so sacred the purity of unaffected virtue, that he dared not hazard offending her; while aware of the tendency of his flattering and incessant assiduity, she was always watchful to prevent any diminution of the respect she had a right to exact; and without affecting to shun his society, which was extremely agreeable, she never suffered him to assume, in his conversation with her, those freedoms which often made him admired by others; nor allowed him to avow that libertinism of principle which she lamented that he possessed. Fitz-Edward, who had at first undertaken to entertain her merely with a view of favouring Delamere's conversation with Emmeline, almost imperceptibly found that it had charms on his own account. He could not be insensible of the graces of a mind so highly cultivated; and he felt his admiration mingled with a reverence and esteem of which he had never before been sensible: but his vanity was piqued at the coldness with which she received his studied and delicate adulation; and, for the first time in his life, he was obliged to acknowledge to himself, that there might be a woman whose mind was superior to it's influence. Not being disposed very tranquilly to submit to this mortifying conviction, he became more anxious to secure that partiality from Mrs. Stafford, which, since he found it so hard to acquire, became necessary to his happiness; and, in the hope of obtaining it, he would probably long have persisted, had not his attention been soon afterwards diverted to another object. It wanted only a few days of a month since Mrs. Stafford's letter was dispatched to Lord Montreville. But the carelessness of the servant who was left in charge of the house in Berkley-square was the only reason of his not noticing it.