"Parker she has already made an attempt on: this you with all your good-natured charity have confessed: and the other night at the play, we observed her sitting in a private box on the opposite side of the house with Baron Tuille. Her glass was pointedly turned towards Worcester all the evening. After the play, while we were waiting for our carriage, Amy, with an affection of childish wildness, made loud remarks on the elegance of Worcester's person, as we passed her. Our party stood on the opposite side of the room from that where the Baron and Amy were waiting. Worcester however was obliged to pass close to them, to inquire for Lord Berwick's servants, and Tuille at the express desire of Amy probably, tapped him on the arm as he was hurrying along, and requested to have the pleasure of introducing Mrs. Sydenham to him. Worcester in much confusion bowed low, very low; but passed on immediately afterwards without uttering a single syllable. "What a bore for Amy! and yet it serves her right! "'I could not possibly avoid being presented to your sister,' said Lord Worcester on his return; and he spoke with such agitation and confusion that it was impossible to help laughing at him. "'You were not very attentive to her, as I think I could observe,' Julia remarked. "'I would not have spoken a single word to her for the world, and I only wish, as a gentleman, it had been possible to have avoided bowing. Mrs. Sydenham has, by her perseverance, made herself so very odious to me,' was Worcester's reply. "Lord Berwick laughed heartily at his extreme delicacy; so did Lord William; but Worcester is steady as a rock to me and my interests. Not even ridicule, that sharpest weapon which malice can turn against the feelings and prejudices of youth, ever changes him one jot, even when it wounds him most severely. "'Any unimpassioned, unprejudiced observer of Harriette's mind and character,' says Worcester, 'must agree with me, that it is much undervalued by that part of the world to whom her eccentricities and careless observance of many established forms only are known; but Harriette's goodness and singleness of heart approximate her nearer to my idea of perfection, than any human being I have yet met with, and her face and person, to me, convey all I can imagine most desirable.' "I repeat this to you, my dear Fanny, merely to show the force and power of ardent passion in youth. _Dieu! comme cela nous embellit!_ "O, _la belle passion! que l'amour!_ not that I have known much good resulting from it. I might almost say, with Candide, '_Helas! je l'ai connu, cet amour, ce souverain des coeurs! cette âme de notre âme! cependant, il ne m'a jamais valu qu'un baiser, et vingt coups de pied! puisse il vous être plus propice!_'