As she was entirely ignorant of the base artifice that had been put in practice against her, and was conscious of no fault Mr. Trueworth had to accuse her of, but that of her going with Miss Forward to the play, after the warning he had given her of the danger, it must be confessed, she had a right to think the provocation too slight to draw from him such resentful expressions, much less to induce him to abandon her. 'Ungrateful man!' said she, bursting into tears of mingled grief and spite, 'to treat me thus, when I was just beginning to entertain the kindest thoughts of him! When I was ready to acknowledge the error I was guilty of, in not following his advice, and had resolved never to throw myself into such inconveniences again. 'Tis plain he never loved me, or he would not have taken so poor, so trifling, a pretence to break with me.' Thus, for some moments, did she bewail, as it were, the ill-treatment she thought she had received from him. Then looking over the letter again, 'With what a magisterial air,' cried she, 'with what an affectation of superiority, does he conclude! "With the most friendly wishes, my humble servant!" Good lack! friendly! Let him carry his friendly wishes to those he may think will receive them as a favour!' Upon revolving in her mind all the circumstances of her behaviour towards Mr. Trueworth, she could find nothing, except what passed at his last visit, that could give him any occasion of disgust, and even that she looked upon as a very insufficient plea for that high resentment he now expressed, much more for his resolving to throw off a passion he had a thousand and a thousand times vowed should be as lasting as his life. The anonymous letter sent her by Miss Flora, some time since, now came fresh into her head; that passage in it which insinuated that Mr. Trueworth had no real design of marrying her, that he but trifled with her, and on the arrival of her brothers would find some pretence or other to break entirely with her, seemed now to tally exactly with his present manner of proceeding. 'The devil,' said she, 'may sometimes speak truth; Mr. Trueworth has but too well verified the words of that malicious girl; and what she herself then thought a falsehood is now confirmed by fact: yet, wherefore,' cried she, 'did he take all this pains; if he never loved me, never hoped any recompense for his dissimulation, what end could he propose by practicing it? What advantage, what pleasure, could it give him to affront the sister of his friend, and impose upon the credulity of a woman he had no design upon?' It would be endless to repeat the many contradictory surmizes which rose alternately in her distracted mind; so I shall only say, she sought, but the more she did so, the more she became incapable of fathoming, the bottom of this mysterious event.