My necessities increasing, relying entirely on the honor of my lover, I permitted him to conduct me to a seat he had in a remote part of the country--It was a frightful dismal house surrounded with yews and willows, whose different forms recalled to my ideas Ovid's Metamorphoses, and made me sometimes ready to bemoan the fate of unhappy lovers converted into evergreens by the supposed enchantress of this dreary mansion. The house had been long uninhabited: by the blackness of the walls, the circular fires, vast cauldrons, yawning mouths of ovens and furnaces, one would conclude, it was either the forge of Vulcan, the cave of Polypheme, or the temple of Moloch. The hangings of the apartments were indeed the finest in the world; that is to say, which Arachne spins from her own bowels. But the affection, the tender respectful behaviour of my lover was _everything to me_. He said he made no doubt but the marquis, when convinced of my merit, would approve of his passion! Unwilling to see him continue in so delusive an error, I told him there was little probability of reviving the golden age in his family; or, hoping that the benevolence of his own heart would become epidemical, was an illusion! that relations or parents saw things in a very different light from their children; as the sentiment of the former arose from cool reflection, and as those of the latter commonly resulted from the caprice of an irregular imagination, or the violence of an impetuous passion, which prompted them to act sometimes in direct opposition to the salutary advice of their best friends.--He replied, that granting that were even the case--the Marquis of M---- could not live for ever--but that no power on earth could induce him to sacrifice his happiness; that he had a _competent_, though not _great_ estate of his own--and would marry me directly, if I chose it, or would take the most solemn oath imaginable, to do it as soon as circumstances rendered it prudent with safety. I consequently rejected agreeing to his proposal: I could not bear the idea of my lover's running the risk of losing a family inheritance on my account; though a possibility of possession altering his sentiments, never entered into my imagination. We remained three months together, the happiest time of my life: Happy moments, how soon you fled, never, never to return!