In the mean while new events were unfolding more fully to the Albanians the characters of their lately acquired friends. Scandal of fifty years standing, must, by this time, have become almost pointless. The house where the young colonel, formerly mentioned, was billetted, and made his quarters good by every art of seductive courtesy, was occupied by a person wealthy, and somewhat vain and shallow, who had an only daughter; I am not certain, but I think she was his only child. She was young, lively, bold, conceited, and exceedingly well looking. Artless and fearless of consequences, this thoughtless creature saw every day a person who was no doubt as much pleased with her as one could be with mere youth, beauty, and kindness, animated by vivacity, and distinguished from her companions by all the embellishments which wealth could procure in that unfashioned quarter; his heart, however, was safe, as will appear from the sequel. Madame foresaw the consequences likely to result from an intimacy daily growing, where there was little prudence on the one side, and as little of that honour which should respect unsuspecting innocence on the other. She warned the family, but in vain; they considered marriage as the worst consequence that could ensue; and this they could not easily have been reconciled to, notwithstanding the family and fortune of the lover, had not his address and attentions charmed them into a kind of tacit acquiescence; for, as a Roman citizen, in the proud days of the republic, would have refused his daughter to a king, an Albanian, at one period, would rather have his daughter married to the meanest of his fellow-citizens, than to a person of the highest rank in the army, because they thought a young person, by such a marriage, was not only forever alienated from her family, but from those pure morals and plain manners, in which they considered the greatest possible happiness to exist. To return: