Heartley, with ease and spirit. “But what will he answer to my reproaches? He has been my slave these twenty years and more, and yet had the audacity to conceal this assignation from me. I am indebted to my friend Mr. Malcolm for the intelligence of my danger; and I now see it,” added she, laughing; “yet, woman to the last, I will maintain my rights to him against youth and beauty.”—A certain mode of expression, with the correct gaiety and ease of her manners, soon attached me to this lady’s side; and in our walk home she apparently slackened her pace, the more unnoticedly to converse with me.—“You will think me very deficient in the rules of good breeding,” said she, when entering the road to the hall, “on finding that I neglect to pay you my respects at Sir Murdock’s house; but I do not visit the family. My avowed affection and long intimacy with Mrs. Howard, and my still longer acquaintance with Captain Flint, have laid me under indelible disgrace with Miss Flint. Lady Maclairn’s situation, and the circumstances of distress under which she has lived, have precluded all approaches to her of a personal kind. You will therefore, I trust, accept of this apology for my not waiting on you and your friend. Yet,” continued she, smiling, “you must not imagine me a woman too obscure for Miss Flint’s notice. In her zeal for her neighbours’ good behaviour, she has thought proper to single me out as an object to be feared and shunned by all modest women. There is, however, a conduct, Miss Cowley, that will refute malice and silence slander, without calling out either resentment or reproach. Mine is such as has done more than was needful for my justification, for it has disappointed an angry woman in her purpose; and my neighbours have always judged me according to that rule of Christian charity, ‘which thinketh no evil.’ They have also gone farther than this precept will justify, for I believe they think I must be _good_, because Miss Flint hates me. Malcolm’s attachment to me and my children has also its share in keeping alive Miss Flint’s animosity. From a child this young man has been regarded, by myself and the family at large with whom I reside, as a cherished and favoured guest. This circumstance has, I much fear, been unfavourable to Miss Howard; it has certainly abridged her in her freedom. She is not permitted to visit her uncle, because he lives under the same roof with me; and she dares not speak to either Alice or myself, when accident throws her in our path, if she has a servant with her. My poor girl murmurs at this refinement in cruelty, and strenuously pleads that I ought to inform Captain Flint of this harsh prohibition; but I forbear, in the hopes that time will relax Miss Lucretia’s heart; and in the interim Mr. Maclairn favours the girls in writing. Miss Howard’s account of Miss Cowley produced the wish to see her,” added she smiling. “This we have effected; and I have only now to add, that if in your seclusion