“A friend of her father’s!” and who can this friend be, whose delicacy of judgment so nicely adapts the gifts to the taste of her on whom they are lavished. For, undoubtedly, the same hand that made the offering of the vases, presented also those other portable elegancies which are so strongly contrasted by the rude original furniture of the _Boudoir_. The tasteful _donneur_ and author of that letter whose torn fragment betrayed the sentiment of no common mind, are certainly one and the same person. Yet, who visits the castle? scarcely any one; the pride and circumstances of the _Prince_ equally forbid it. Sometimes, though rarely, an old Milesian cousin, or poor relation will drop in, but those of them that I have seen, are mere commonplace people. I have indeed heard the Prince speak of a cousin in the Spanish service, and a nephew in the Irish brigades, now in Germany. But the cousin is an old man, and the nephew he has not seen since he was a child. Yet, after all, these presents may have come from one of those relatives; if so, as Glorvina has no recollection of either, how I should curse that jealous temper which has purchased for me some moments of torturing doubts. I remember you used often to say, that any woman could _pique_ me into love by affecting indifference, and that the native jealousy of my disposition would always render me the slave of any woman who knew how to play upon my dominant passion. The fact is, when my heart erects an idol for its secret homage, it is madness to think that another should even bow at the shrine, much less that his offerings should be propitiously received. But it is the silence of Glorvina on the subject of this generous friend, that distracts me; if, after all--oh! it is impossible--it is sacrilege against heaven to doubt her! She practised in deception! she, whose every look, every motion betrays a soul that is all truth, innocence, and virtue! I have endeavoured to sound the priest on the subject, and affected to admire the vases; repeating the same questions with which I had teased Glorvina. But he, too, carelessly replied, “they were given her by a friend of her father’s.” H. M. LETTER XXV. TO J. D. ESQ., M. P.