country at once. Her ready compliance delighted Dorriforth, and for six
weeks all around was the picture of tranquillity. Then Lord Frederick
suddenly appeared at the door as she alighted from her coach, and
seizing her hand, entreated her "not to desert him in compliance with
the injunctions of monkish hypocrisy."

Dorriforth heard this, standing silently by, with a manly scorn upon his
countenance; but on Miss Milner's struggling to release her hand, which
Lord Frederick was devouring with kisses, with an instantaneous impulse
he rushed forward and struck him a violent blow in the face. Then,
leading her to her own chamber, covered with shame and confusion for
what he had done, he fell on his knees before her, and earnestly
"entreated her forgiveness for the indelicacy he had been guilty of in
her presence."

To see her guardian at her feet struck her with a sense of impropriety
as if she had seen a parent there. All agitation and emotion, she
implored him to rise, and, with a thousand protestations, declared "that
she thought the rashness of his action was the highest proof of his
regard for her."

Finding that Lord Frederick had gone when he had resigned the care of
his ward to Miss Woodley, Dorriforth returned to his own apartment with
a bosom torn by excruciating sensations. He had departed from his sacred
character, and the dignity of his profession and sentiments; he had
treated with unpardonable insult a young nobleman whose only offence was
love; he had offended and filled with horror a beautiful young woman
whom it was his duty to protect from those brutal manners to which he
himself had exposed her.