I thank you, sir, thank you from my heart, for your friendship, and beg you will not think me ungrateful for having thus long deferred to pay you my acknowlegements for the signal favours I have received at your hands. I am sensible, Sir, that it was owing to your compassion, your generosity, and disinterested nobleness of mind, that I was once indebted for the greatest blessing of my life. To you I owe the vindicating of my suspected faith, and the being restored to the affection of my dear husband. For this goodness I have never ceased to bless and pray for you, and shall continue to do so while I live. But oh! Sir, while you have given _me_ so much cause for gratitude and esteem, why will you leave one heart to sigh for your unkindness? a heart that admires, that loves, that adores you! a heart worthy of your acceptance, and which has a right to demand all your tenderness. Need I name the amiable possessor of this heart? I need not; there is but one woman in the world who owns this description: for her let me become an advocate; she has won me to her party: indeed. Sir, she, and she only, deserves your love. Her's, I am sure, you have ever possessed unrivalled, though her youth, beauty, and charming accomplishments, must have made her the object of every one's wishes who saw her. 'Tis above four years since you first won her virgin affections. What has been her portion since that fatal time? Tears, solitude, and unremitting anguish. How can a mind like yours, susceptible as it is of pity for the woes of others, condemn _such_ a woman to perpetual sorrow? How can that generosity, which has been so active on other occasions, droop and languish where there is _such_ a cause to call forth all its exertions? Do, Mr Faulkland, permit pity to plead in your bosom for the dear Miss Burchell. I should urge paternal affection too; but to the voice of nature you cannot be deaf. Your sweet little son calls upon you to do him and his mother justice; the injured lady herself implores your compassion; my mother, who equally admires and loves her, intreats you; I, whom you once esteemed, conjure you; the secret monitor in your own soul must join in our sollicitations. Why, then, why will you shut your ears against the united voice of reason, of conscience, and of gratitude? You cannot, you will not do it. Miss Burchell's merit and sufferings must be rewarded; and I shall bless Mr Faulkland as the guardian of the injured, the patron of the afflicted, the assertor of his own, as well as of my honour. This is the light, and this only, in which I shall rejoice to see him. _Mr_ FAULKLAND's _Answer_