tears of blood;
yet not receding from the resolution she had formed, nothing could be
more truly moving than the scene between them.

At length he ceased to mention marriage, but conjured her to consider
the snares which would be continually laid, by wicked and designing men,
for one so young and beautiful:--that she could go no where without
finding other Bellfleurs; and she might judge, by the danger she had
just now so narrowly escaped, of the probability of being involved again
in the same:--he represented to her, in the most pathetic terms, that
her innocence could have no sure protection but in the arms of a
husband, or the walls of a convent; and on his knees beseeched her, for
the sake of that virtue which she so justly prized, since she would not
accept of him for the one, to permit him to place her in that other only
asylum for a person in her circumstances.

Difficult was it for her to resist an argument, the reason of which she
was so well convinced of, and could offer nothing in contradiction to,
but that she had a certain aversion in her nature to receive any
obligations from a man who had declared himself her lover, and who might
possibly hereafter presume upon the favours he had done her.

It was in vain he complained of her unjust suspicion in this point,
which, to remove, he protested to her that he would leave the choice of
the monastry wholly to herself: that in whatever part she thought would
be most agreeable, he would conduct her; and that, after she was
entered, he would not even attempt to see her thro' the grate, without
having first received her permission for his visit. Not all this was
sufficient to assure her scrupulous delicacy: she remained constant in
her determination; and all he could prevail on her, was leave to attend
her as far as Leghorn, to secure her from any second attempt the
injurious count might possibly make.

After this they entered into some discourse of Melanthe, and whether it
would be proper for Louisa to write her an account of this affair, and
the count's perfidiousness. Monsieur du Plessis said, he thought that
the late usage she had received from that lady, deserved not she should
take any interest in her affairs; but it was not this that hindered
Louisa from doing it:--the remembrance of the kindness she had once been
treated with by her, more than balanced, in her way of thinking, all the
insults that succeeded it; and when she reflected how much Melanthe
love