'Have I not?' cried he. 'Sweet Cherry, beautiful Cherry, blessings on you for that!' 'Come away,' said Montmorenci hastily. 'You know 'tis near dinner time.' 'Farewell, Doctor,' said I. 'Adieu, poor Wilkinson.' 'What, leaving me?' cried he, 'leaving your old father a prisoner in this vile house? Oh, cruel, cruel!' 'Come,' said Montmorenci, taking my hand: 'I have particular business elsewhere.' 'For pity's sake, stay five minutes!' cried Wilkinson, struggling with the servants. 'Come, my love!' said Montmorenci. 'Only one minute--one short minute!' cried the other. 'Well,' said I, stopping, 'one minute then.' 'Not one moment!' cried his lordship, and was hurrying me away. 'My child, my child!' cried Wilkinson, with a tone of such indescribable agony, as made the blood curdle in my veins. 'Dear Sir,' said I, returning; 'indeed I am your friend. But you know, you know well, I am not your child.' 'You are!' cried he, 'by all that is just and good, you are my own child!' 'By all that is just and good,' exclaimed Montmorenci, 'you shall come away this instant, or remain here for ever.' And he dragged me out of the room. 'Now then,' said the poor prisoner, as the door was closing, 'now do what you please with me, for my heart is quite broken!' On our way home, his lordship enjoined the strictest secrecy with regard to this adventure. I shewed him the hundred pounds, and reimbursed him for what he had paid the Doctor; and on our arrival, I discharged my debt to the poet. Adieu. LETTER XIII Soon after I had got into these lodgings, I sent the servant to Grosvenor Square, with a message for Betterton, requesting him to let me have back the bandbox, which I left at his house the night I fled from him. In a short time she returned with it, and I found every article safe. To my amazement and dismay, who should enter my apartment this morning but Betterton himself! I dropped my book. He bowed to the dust. 'Your business, Sir?' said I, rising with a dignity, which, from my being under the repeated necessity of assuming it, has now become natural to me. 'To make a personal apology,' replied he, 'for the disrespectful and inhospitable treatment which the loveliest of her sex experienced at my house.' 'An apology for one insult,' said I, 'must seem insincere, when the mode adopted for making it is another insult.' 'The retort is exquisitely elegant,' answered he, 'but I trust, not true. For, granting, my dear Madam, that I offer a second insult by my intrusion, still I may lessen the first insult so much by my apology that the sum of both may be less than the first, as it originally stood.' 'Really,' said I, 'you have blended politeness and arithmetic so happily together; you have clothed multiplication and subtraction in such polished phraseology----' 'Good!' cried he, 'that is real wit.' 'You have added so much algebra to so much sentiment,' continued I. 'Good, good!' interrupted he again.