Tell me, tell me, sincerely, thou deceived or deceiving girl! What is become of those projects we formed together in secret? Where are fled those vain hopes, with which you so often flattered my credulous simplicity? What say you now to that sacred union my heart panted after, the secret cause of so many ardent sighs, and with which your lips and your pen have so often indulged my hopes? I presumed alas! on your promises, to aspire to the sacred name of husband, and thought myself already the most fortunate of men. Say, cruel Eloisa, did you not flatter me thus only to render my disappointment the more mortifying, my affliction the more severe? Have I incurred this misfortune by my own crimes? Have I been wanting in obedience, in tractability, in discretion? Have you ever seen me so weak and absurd in my desires, as to deserve to be thus rejected? or have I ever preferred their gratification to your absolute commands? I have done, I have studied, every thing to please you, and yet you renounce me. You undertook to make me happy, and you make me miserable. Ungrateful woman! account with me for the trust I deposited in your hands; account with me for my heart, after having reduced it by a supreme felicity that raised me to an equality with angels. I envied not their lot; I was the happiest of beings; though now alas! I am the most miserable! A single moment has deprived me of every thing, and I am fallen instantaneously from the pinnacle of happiness to the lowest gulph of misery. I touch even yet the felicity that escapes me. I have still hold of, it, and lose it for ever----Ah, could I but believe! ----if the remains of false hope did not flatter----Why, why, ye rocks of Meillerie, whose precipices my wandering eye so often measured, why did you not assist my despair! I had then less regretted life, ere enjoyment had taught me its value. Letter LXVII. Lord B---- to Mrs. Orbe. Being arrived at Besançon, I take the first opportunity to write you the particulars of our journey; which, if not passed very agreeably, has at least been attended with no ill accident. Your friend is as well in health as can be expected for a man so sick at heart. He even endeavours to affect outwardly a kind of tranquillity, to which his heart is a stranger; and, being ashamed of his weakness, lays himself under a good deal of restraint before me. This only served, however, to betray the secret agitations of his mind; and though I seemed to be deceived by his behaviour, it was only to leave him to his own thoughts, with the view of opposing one part of his faculties to repress the effects of the other.