o
productive of that sort of mischief which is particularly agreeable to
all of her tribe, she undertook to manage and effect the discovery, in
full confidence of her own talents and experience.

With such a fund of self-sufficiency and instigation, she repaired to the
academy on the instant, and inquiring for Mr. Fathom, was introduced to
his apartment, where she found him in the very act of writing a billet to
the jeweller's daughter. The artful agent having asked, with the
mysterious air of an expert go-between, if he had not lately received a
message from a certain young lady, and, being answered in the
affirmative, gave him to understand, that she herself was a person
favoured with the friendship and confidence of Wilhelmina, whom she had
known from her cradle, and often dandled on her knee; then, in the
genuine style of a prattling dry nurse, she launched out in encomiums on
his Dulcinea's beauty and sweetness of temper, recounting many simple
occurrences of her infancy and childhood; and, finally, desiring a more
circumstantial answer to that which she had sent to him by her friend
Catherina. In the course of her loquacity she had also, according to her
instructions, hinted at the misfortune of the door; and, on the whole,
performed her cue with such dexterity and discretion that our politician
was actually overreached, and, having finished his epistle, committed it
to her care, with many verbal expressions of eternal love and fidelity to
his charming Wilhelmina.

The messenger, doubly rejoiced at her achievement, which not only
recommended her ministry, but also gratified her malice, returned to her
principal with great exultation, and, delivering the letter, the reader
will easily conceive the transports of that lady when she read the
contents of it in these words:--

"ANGELIC WILHELMINA!--To forget those ecstatic scenes we have enjoyed
together, or even live without the continuation of that mutual bliss,
were to quit all title to perception, and resign every hope of future
happiness. No! my charmer, while my head retains the least spark of
invention, and my heart glows with the resolution of a man, our
correspondence shall not be cut off by the machinations of an envious
stepmother, who never had attractions to inspire a generous passion; and,
now that age and wrinkles have destroyed what little share of beauty she
once possessed, endeavours, like the fiend in paradise, to blast those
joys in others, fro