s familiarities,
and griping her soft and tender limbs! Oh, why was I born! Why was I ever
cheated with the phantom of happiness! Wretch, wretch that I am!"

With these words he burst out of the house, and flew along with surprising
rapidity. Sir William, having hastily ordered everything to be prepared
for a pursuit, immediately followed him. He found him, wafted, spent, and
almost insensible, lying beside a little brook that crossed the road. The
baronet raised him in his arms, and, with the gentlest accents that
friendship ever poured into a mortal ear, recovered him to life and
perception.

"Where am I?" said the disconsolate lover. "Who are you? ah, my friend, my
best, my tried friend! I know you now. How came I here? Has any thing
unfortunate happened? Where is my Delia?" "Let us seek her, my Villiers,"
said the baronet. "Seek her! What! is she lost? Oh, yes, I recollect it
now; she is gone, snatched from my arms. Let us pursue her! Let us
overtake her Oh that it may not be too late."

He now leaned upon the shoulder of his friend, and returned with painful
and irregular steps. His disorder was so great, that sir William thought
it best to have him immediately conveyed to a chamber. He was so much
exhausted, that this was easily accomplished, without his being perfectly
sensible what was done. The baronet, with three servants mounted on
horseback, immediately pursued the road towards London.--Having thus
related the confusion and grief that were occasioned by her sudden
disappearance, we will now return to our heroine.

She had advanced, according to the intention she had hinted to her
servant, towards the grove, where she had so often wandered with her
beloved. She was wrapped up and lost in the contemplation of her
approaching felicity. "And is every difficulty surmounted, and shall at
last my fate be twined with Damon's? Sure, it is too much, it cannot be!
Fate does not deal so partially with mortals. To bestow so vast a
happiness on one, while thousands pine in helpless misery. But let me not
be incredulous. Let me not be ungrateful. No, since heaven has thus
accumulated its favours on me, my future days shall all be spent in
raising the oppressed, and cheering the disconsolate. I will remember that
I also have tasted the cup of woe, that I have looked forward to
disappointment and despair. _Taught by the hand that pities me,_ I
will learn to pity others."

She was thus musing with herself, she was thus f