, and when I had gone to join my ship in America, they had had
some communication together, in which Mr Somerville disclosed, that
having questioned his daughter, she had ingenuously confessed that I was
not indifferent to her. She acknowledged, with crimson blushes, that I
had requested and obtained a lock of her hair. This Mr Somerville told
my father in confidence. He was not, therefore, at liberty to mention
it to me; but it sufficiently accounts for his astonishment at my
seeming indifference, for the two worthy parents had naturally concluded
that it was a match.

Confounded and bewildered by my asseveration, that my father knew not
whose veracity to impeach; but charitably concluding there was some
mistake, or that I was, as heretofore, a fickle, thoughtless being,
considered himself bound in honour to communicate the substance of our
conversation to Mr Somerville; and the latter no sooner received it,
than he placed the letter in Emily's hands--a very comfortable kind of
_avant-coureur_ for a lover, after an absence from his mistress of full
three years.

I arrived at the Hall, bursting with impatience to see the lovely girl,
whose hold on my heart and affection was infinitely stronger than I had
ever supposed. Darting from the chaise, I flew into the sitting-room,
where she usually passed her morning. I was now in my twenty-second
year; my figure was decidedly of a handsome cast; my face, what I knew
most women admired. My personal advantages were heightened by the
utmost attention to dress; the society of the fair Arcadians had very
much polished my manners, and I had no more of the professional
roughness of the sea, than what, like the crust of the port wine, gave
an agreeable flavour; my countenance was as open and as ingenuous as my
heart was deceitful and desperately wicked.

Emily rose with much agitation, and in an instant was clasped in my
arms: not that the movement was voluntary on her part, it was wholly on
mine. She rather recoiled, but for an instant seemed to have forgotten
the fatal communication which her father had made to her not two hours
before. She allowed me--perhaps she could not prevent it--to press her
to my heart. She soon, however, regained her presence of mind, and,
gently disengaging herself, gave vent to her feelings in a violent flood
of tears.

Not at the time recollecting the conversation with my father, much less
suspecting that Emily had been made acquainted with