y. I hope I am superior to forms. She
is conscious. I can pity her. She is a gentlewoman; and entitled to a
place at any man's table to whom she never was a servant. She never was
mine.

And what, Miss Grandison, could you say in answer? asked I.

What!--Why I put up my lip.

Ungracious girl!

I can't help it. That may become a man to do in such cases as this, that
would not a woman.

Sir Charles wants not delicacy, my dear, said I.

He must suppose, that I should have sat swelling, and been reserved: he
was right not to ask me--So be quiet, Harriet--And yet, perhaps, you
would be as tame to a husband's mistress, as you seem favourable to a
father's.

She then put on one of her arch looks--

The cases differ, Charlotte--But do you know what passed between the
generous man, and the mortified woman and her children; mortified as they
must be by his goodness?

Yes, yes; I had curiosity enough to ask Dr. Bartlett about it all.

Pray, Charlotte--

Dr. Bartlett is favourable to every body, sinners as well as saints--He
began with praising the modesty of her dress, the humility of her
behaviour: he said, that she trembled and looked down, till she was
reassured by Sir Charles. Such creatures have all their tricks, Harriet.

You, Charlotte, are not favourable to sinners, and hardly to saints. But
pray proceed.

Why, he re-assured the woman, as I told you. And then proceeded to ask
many questions of the elder Oldham--I pitied that young fellow--to have a
mother in his eye, whose very tenderness to the young ones kept alive the
sense of her guilt. And yet what would she have been, had she not been
doubly tender to the innocents, who were born to shame from her fault?
The young man acknowledged a military genius; and Sir Charles told him,
that he would, on his return from a journey he was going to take,
consider whether he could not do him service in the way he chose. He
gave him, it seems, a brief lecture on what he should aim to be, and what
avoid, to qualify himself for a man of true honour; and spoke very
handsomely of such gentlemen of the army as are real gentlemen. The
young fellow, continued Miss Grandison, may look upon himself to be as
good as provided for, since my brother never gives the most distant hope
that is not followed by absolute certainty, the first opportunity, not
that offers, but which he can make.

He took great notice of the little boys. He dilated their hearts, and
set them a prating;