it.

But being the first that recovered presence of mind; madame, I beseech
you, said he, involve not the innocent with the guilty:--I acknowledge
you have reason to resent the boldness of the count; but I am no
otherwise a sharer in his crime than in reporting it; and if you knew
the pain it gave my heart while I complied with the promise I was
unhappily betrayed into, I am sure you would forgive the misdemeanor of
my tongue.

Sir, answered she, I can easily forgive the slight opinion one so much a
stranger to me as yourself may have of me; but monsieur the count has
been a constant visitor to the lady I am with, ever since our arrival at
Venice; and am very certain he never found any thing in my behaviour to
him or any other person, which could justly encourage him to send me
such a message:--a message, indeed, equally affrontive to himself, since
it shews him a composition of arrogance, vanity, perfidy, and every
thing that is contemptible in man.--This, sir, is the reply I send him,
and desire you to tell him withal, that if he persists in giving me any
farther trouble of this nature, I shall let him know my sense of it in
the presence of Melanthe.

Monsieur du Plessis then assured her he would be no less exact in
delivering what she said, than he had been in the observance of his
promise to the other, and conjured her to believe he should do it with
infinite more satisfaction. He then made use of so many arguments to
prove, that a man of honour ought not to falsify his word, tho' given to
an unworthy person, that she was at last won to forgive his having
undertaken to mention any thing to her of the nature he had done.

Indeed, the agitations she had been in were more owing to the vexation
that monsieur du Plessis was the person employed, than that the count
had the boldness to apply to her in this manner; but the submission she
found herself treated with by the former, convincing her that he had
sentiments very different from those the other had entertained of her,
rendered her more easy, and she not only forgave his share in the
business which had brought him there, but also permitted him to repeat
his visits, on condition he never gave her any cause to suspect the mean
opinion the count had of her conduct had any influence on him.

CHAP. XIII.

_Louisa finds herself very much embarrassed by Melanthe's imprudent
behaviour. Monsieur du Plessis declares an honourable passion for her:
her sentiments and w