owever, has been deeply
affected by her charms, and though he learns that she is engaged to De
Semar, he sends her an appealing letter to discover whether the match is
the result of choice or duty. Upon the receipt of this billet the soul
of Anadea is distracted between the impulses of love and the dictates of
prudence. Finally she writes a discreet, but not too severe reply,
intimating that her choice is due more to duty than to inclination.
Naturally the Count protests vehemently against her sacrificing herself
to a man for whom she cares nothing, vows that the day of her wedding
with De Semar shall be his last upon earth, and entreats a meeting.

"What now became of the enamour'd Anadea? How was it possible for a
Heart so prepossessed as hers, to hold out in a Reserve which was very
near breaking the Strings which held it--... Yet still the
Consequences that might attend this Meeting, for a Time repelled the
Dictates of her Passion.--But it was no more than a faint Struggle;
Love! all-conquering, all-o'er-powering Love! triumphed over every
other Consideration! and she consented to his and her own impatient
Wishes."

Under the pretence of a change of air she goes to a friend's house at
Versailles, where Blessure secretly weds her. After a short period of
felicity, they are betrayed by an officious maid. Blessure kills the
Chevalier, but is himself wounded and cast into prison. His father
secures a pardon by promising the king's mistress that the Count shall
marry her daughter, but Blessure remains constant to Anadea, though
keeping his marriage a secret for fear of infuriating his father. He is
sent away by his displeased parent to learn the virtue of obedience,
while Anadea retires to St. Cloud to await her husband's return. There
the story ends in an unexpected tragedy of incest and blood.

The back-stairs intrigues and the sensational horrors which to the
majority of Mrs. Haywood's readers doubtless seemed the chief attraction
of the story are not different from the melodramatic features of
countless other amatory tales, French and English. But when for a dozen
pages the author seeks to discover and explain the motives of her
characters both by impersonal comment and by the self-revelation of
letters, she is making a noteworthy step--even if an unconscious one--
toward the Richardsonian method of laying bare the inner natures of
ordinary people. She has here pursued the analysis of character as