ook place; and if you will please,
in the first place to consider that that very conversation originated in
my expressing a wish and intention of coming down to see you, and to
produce to your daughter the memento so carefully guarded during my long
absence, you must perceive that there is an incongruity in my conduct
difficult to explain; but still, through all these mazes and windings, I
trust that truth and constancy will be found at the bottom. You may
probably laugh at the idea, but I really felt jealous of my father's
praises so lavishly bestowed on Miss Somerville; and not supposing he
was aware of my attachment, I began to fear he had pretensions of his
own. He is a widower, healthy, and not old; and it appeared to me, that
he only wanted my admiration to justify his choice of a stepmother for
myself and sister. Thus, between love for Miss Somerville, and respect
for my father, I scarcely knew how to act. That I should for one moment
have felt jealous of my father I now acknowledge with shame; yet
labouring under the erroneous supposition of his attachment to an object
which had been the only one of my adoration, I could not make up my mind
to a disclosure which I feared would have renewed our differences and
produced the most insuperable bars to our future reconciliation. This
thought burned in my brain, and urged the speed of the jaded
post-horses. If you will examine the drivers, they will tell you that
the whole way from town they have been stimulated by the rapping of a
Spanish dollar on the glass of the chaise. I dreaded my father getting
the start of me; and busy fancy painted him to my heated imagination
kneeling at the feet of my beloved Emily. Condemn me not, therefore,
too harshly; only allow me the same lenient judgment which you exercised
when I first had the pleasure of making your acquaintance."

This last sentence delicately recalled the scene at the inn, and the
circumstances of my first introduction. The defence was not bad; it
wanted but one simple ingredient to have made it excellent--I mean
truth; but the court being strongly biassed in favour of the prisoner, I
was acquitted, and at the same time "admonished to be more careful in
future." The reconciliation produced a few more tears from my beloved
Emily, who soon after slipped out of the room to recover her flurry.

When Mr Somerville and myself were left together, he explained to me
the harmless plot which had been laid for the