'Dear Miss, I must either be the most ungrateful, or most consumedly dull fellow upon earth, not to have returned the advances you have been so kind to make me, had the least opportunity offered for my doing so; but Lady Mellasin, her daughter, the fool Saving, or some impertinent creature or other, has always been in the way, so that there was not a possibility of giving you even the least earnest of love: but, my dear, I have found out a way to pay you the whole sum with interest; which is this--you must invent some excuse for going out alone, and let me know by a billet, directed for me at White's, the exact hour, and I will wait for you at the corner of the street in a hackney-coach, the window drawn up, and whirl you to a pretty snug place I know of, where we may pass a delicious hour or two without a soul to interrupt our pleasures. Let me find a line from you to-morrow, if you can any way contrive it, being impatient to convince you how much I am, my dear creature, yours, &c. &c. J. GAYLAND.' Impossible it is to express the mingled emotions of shame, surprize, and indignation, which filled the breast of Miss Betsy, on reading this bold invitation; she threw the letter on the ground, she stamped upon it, she spurned it, and would have treated the author in the same manner, had he been present; but the first transports of so just a resentment being over, a consciousness of having, by a too free behaviour towards him, emboldened him to take this liberty, involved her in the utmost confusion, and she was little less enraged with herself, than she had reason to be with him. She could have tore out her very eyes for having affected to look kindly upon a wretch who durst presume so far on her supposed affection; and though she spared those pretty twinklers that violence, she half drowned their lustre in a deluge of tears. Never was a night passed in more cruel anxieties than what she sustained; both from the affront she had received, and the reflection that it was chiefly the folly of her own conduct which had brought it on her; and what greatly added to her vexation, was the uncertainty how it would best become her to act on an occasion which appeared so extraordinary to her. She had no friend whom she thought it proper to consult; she was ashamed to relate the story to any of the discreet and serious part of her acquaintance; she feared their reproofs for having counterfeited a tenderness for a man, which she was now sensible she ought, if it had been real, rather to have concealed with the utmost care both from him and all the world; and as for Lady Mellasin and Miss Flora, though their conduct inspired her not with any manner of awe, yet she thought she saw something in those ladies which did not promise much sincerity, and shewed as if they would rather turn her complaints into ridicule, than