otel. Mr. Falkland came to the door to receive him, but
requested him to enter the house for a moment, as he had still an affair
of three minutes to despatch. They proceeded to a parlour. Here Mr.
Falkland left him, and presently returned leading in Lady Lucretia
herself, adorned in all her charms, and those charms heightened upon the
present occasion by a consciousness of the spirited and generous
condescension she was exerting. Mr. Falkland led her up to the
astonished count; and she, gently laying her hand upon the arm of her
lover, exclaimed with the most attractive grace, "Will you allow me to
retract the precipitate haughtiness into which I was betrayed?" The
enraptured count, scarcely able to believe his senses, threw himself
upon his knees before her, and stammered out his reply, signifying that
the precipitation had been all his own, that he only had any forgiveness
to demand, and, though they might pardon, he could never pardon himself
for the sacrilege he had committed against her and this god-like
Englishman. As soon as the first tumults of his joy had subsided, Mr.
Falkland addressed him thus:--

"Count Malvesi, I feel the utmost pleasure in having thus by peaceful
means disarmed your resentment, and effected your happiness. But I must
confess, you put me to a severe trial. My temper is not less impetuous
and fiery than your own, and it is not at all times that I should have
been thus able to subdue it. But I considered that in reality the
original blame was mine. Though your suspicion was groundless, it was
not absurd. We have been trifling too much in the face of danger. I
ought not, under the present weakness of our nature and forms of
society, to have been so assiduous in my attendance upon this enchanting
woman. It would have been little wonder, if, having so many
opportunities, and playing the preceptor with her as I have done, I had
been entangled before I was aware, and harboured a wish which I might
not afterwards have had courage to subdue. I owed you an atonement for
this imprudence.

"But the laws of honour are in the utmost degree rigid; and there was
reason to fear that, however anxious I were to be your friend, I might
be obliged to be your murderer. Fortunately, the reputation of my
courage is sufficiently established, not to expose it to any impeachment
by my declining your present defiance. It was lucky, however, that in
our interview of yesterday you found me alone, and that accident by