bring her into her usual composedness, and enable her to give him the
satisfaction he required.

But as soon as she had, by degrees, recollected herself, she modestly
related all that had happened to her from the time she left him;--the
methods by which she endeavoured to earn her bread,--the insults she was
exposed to at mrs. C--l--ge's;--the way she came acquainted with
Melanthe;--the kindness shown her by that lady;--their travels
together;--the base stratagem made use of by count de Bellfleur to ruin
her with that lady--the honourable position monsieur du Plessis had
professed for her;--the seasonable assistance he had given her, in that
iminent danger she was in from the count's unlawful designs upon
her;--his placing her afterwards in the monastry,--the treachery of the
abbess;--the artifice she had been obliged to make use of to get out of
the nunnery;--her pilgrimage;--in fine, concealed no part of her
adventures, only that which related to the passion she had for du
Plessis, which she endeavoured, as much as she could, to disguise, under
the names of gratitude for the obligations he had conferred upon her,
and admiration of his virtue, so different from what she had found in
others who had addressed her.

Dorilaus, however, easily perceived the tenderness with which she was
agitated on the account of that young gentleman, but he would not excite
her blushes by taking any notice of it, especially as he found nothing
to condemn in it, and had observed, throughout the course of her whole
narrative, she had behaved on other occasions with a discretion far
above her years, he was far from wronging her, by suspecting she had
swerved from it in this.

But when he heard the vast journey she had come on foot, he was in the
utmost amazement at her fortitude, and told her he was resolved to keep
her pilgrim's habit as a relique, to preserve to after-ages the memory
of an adventure, which had really something more marvellous in it than
many set down as miracles.

And now having fully gratified his own curiosity in all he wanted to be
informed of, he thought proper to case the impatience she was in to know
the history of her birth, and on what occasion it had been so long
concealed, which he did in these or the like words:

CHAP. XXIV.

_The history of Dorilaus and Matilda, with other circumstances very
important to Louisa_.

You know, said he, that I am descended of one of the most illustrious
families in En