_If_ you marry, said my brother! I know of no possible _ifs_, unless they are of your own making. I know of none neither, answered my mother; yet I think Sidney is in the right to be doubtful about all human events. Many things, added she gravely (for she has a great veneration for old sayings), fall out between the cup and the lip. I think, mother, said Sir George, bluntly, _you_ were disappointed in your _first_ love; I have heard you speak of it, but I forget the circumstances. As I had never heard my mother make any mention of this particular, I begged she would oblige me with relating it. When I was about one-and-twenty, daughter, said she, a match was concluded by my father between me and a very fine gentleman. I loved him, and (as I suppose all young women do in the like circumstances) believed myself equally beloved by him. The courtship had been of a year's standing; for you must know I was not very easily won. Every thing was settled, and the day appointed for our marriage arrived; when, instead of the bridegroom, whom we every minute expected, there came a letter from him directed to me. The contents were, that having formerly been engaged to a young lady by the most solemn vows, he had, unfortunately for them both, forgot them all on seeing me, and had broke through every obligation divine and human to obtain me. He intreated mine, and my family's pardon, in the most pathetic manner, for having engaged our esteem so far as to consent to an union, of which he found himself unworthy, and which it was impossible for him to accomplish; for, said he, the wrongs I have done the woman, whose youth I seduced, rise to my imagination with so much horror, that, for the empire of the world, I would not complete my guilt, by devoting that hand to another, to which she only has a right. He enlarged greatly on the sufferings of his heart, in the struggle between his love for me, and his duty to the person who had his first vows; and whom, he declared, his infidelity had almost brought to the grave. He claimed my pity, both on his own and her account; and repeatedly intreated my forgiveness of his fault.