if not even his life, must pay the price of the delay. “Could you bear, my beloved Maria, to see me a miserable lunatic or a lifeless corpse?” “In the one or the other, I should follow you,” replied she, in a still softer whisper. At this time, a letter was brought to Hamilton, which Maria could not help perceiving to be in a woman’s hand. Our hero seeing it to be the same writing as he had received the day before from an unknown lady, put it into his pocket; but the servant telling him that a porter waited for the answer, he went out, leaving poor Maria pale and trembling. Opening the letter, Hamilton read the following words: “Charming youth, Will you, at eleven this evening, be on the Steyne, and meet a lady, neither old, ugly, nor disagreeable? Your appearance bespeaks you a man of honour; I need say no more. AMANDA.” Hamilton was very far from being a man of intrigue; but, on the other hand, was not a perfect Sir Charles Grandison; besides, he was now elevated with wine, and not indisposed to a frolic; and having a ready invention, he immediately devised a scheme for disengaging himself from his mother and sister: he wrote the lady that he should attend so sweet an invitation; but that, as he was engaged with a family party, he requested that she would send a message by a different porter, earnestly desiring his company at the Coffee-house, in the name of Richard Scribble, esq. The lady, who highly relished every kind of artifice, had this stratagem completely executed. Hamilton having returned to the ladies, observed marks of uneasiness in Maria’s face, and that though Mrs. Somerive was entertaining her with that mixture of sense, feeling, and humour, which he knew to be most agreeable to the taste of his mistress; she lent a very constrained attention. Mrs. Hamilton now proposed to go home, and as she was rising for that purpose, a servant informed her son that Mr. Scribble was at the Coffee-house, and very earnestly requested to see Mr. Hamilton, on most particular business. “My compliments, and I will be with him presently.” He accordingly departed. “It is very strange what that foolish fellow could want with my son at such an hour.” Maria was entirely of the same opinion as to the strangeness of Hamilton’s going out, though she had a different conception of the cause; she well knew that Hamilton very thoroughly despised the book manufacturer, and reckoned his particular businesses frivolous nonsense; she therefore conjectured that he was going upon some other business, arising from the letter she had seen him receive. Brooding over this idea, resentment and grief filled her susceptible bosom, which finding herself unable to contain, she hastily withdrew, and sending an apology to the ladies, ran to her own apartment, and threw herself upon the bed in an agony of tears. Mrs. Somerive comprehended the case, and,