Upon discovering him as he approached, the timid damsel started from her seat, and was preparing to withdraw, when with that gentle action, which more resembles intercession than compulsion having induced her to resume her seat, he said--It has been a long and tedious banishment, to which your governess condemned me: and since my good fortune has now thrown an opportunity in my way, which I have ardently wished for, and of which I may honourably avail myself, don’t think me too importunate, if I solicit you to give me a hearing whilst I discharge my conscience of a duty, that I owe to the parent, whom we have this day followed to the grave. Perhaps Miss Jones, you are not apprised by what solemn obligations I am bound to consider your honour, interest and happiness unalienably connected and interwoven with my own. How dear you were to my departed mother I well know; what I professed to you in our first and only interview I religiously bear in mind: I have every impression of your merit, every sensibility of your charms both of mind and person, that our very short acquaintance could inspire, and by the sacred solemnity of this day I swear to you, that, if Heaven grants me life, I will live to your service. Mr. De Lancaster, she replied, though I cannot at this moment find expressions for my gratitude, I hope you will believe, that, if I felt it less, I could express it better. It is indeed a very long time since you honoured me with your visit, and of course this is the very first instant I can profit by for returning my most heart-felt thanks for your invaluable present, which by some misunderstanding on the part of Mrs. Jennings I have till now unhappily been deprived of doing. As I did not know that you had been the bearer of that kind present till after you had left the house, I must not presume to judge of your reasons for resenting the reception, that you met with from the lady, under whose care I am; but I may venture to assure you, it was never her intention to give offence to Mr. De Lancaster, and I must leave it with yourself to reflect, whether it is consistent with your idea of what is just and right to harbour a lasting resentment for an unpremeditated trespass. If you judge me by appearances, Miss Jones, he replied, I may suffer in your good opinion; but in absenting myself from Mrs. Jennings’s house I conceive I only acted as every man of honour ought to act towards a lady, who gave him clearly to understand that his visits were unwelcome. You may not have been informed that the very first time I waited upon you at Denbigh she intimated this to me most pointedly by letter, and when a second time I was not suffered to deliver into your hands what I had in charge to give you from my mother, judge if I could so misunderstand either her or myself, as ever to intrude again, and provoke her to give me a more explicit dismission.