mean _efforts_ to declare my inclination.--I have follow'd him like a
ghost for days past, thinking at every step how I should bless _this_ or
_that_ spot on which he consented to my happiness.--Pleasing
phantoms!--How have they fled at sight of his determin'd
countenance!--Methought I could trace _in it_ the same obduracy which
nature vainly pleaded to remove.--In _other_ matters my heart is
resolute;--_here_ an errant coward.--No! I cannot break it to him whilst
in Hampshire.--When I get to town, a letter _shall_ speak for
me.--Sometimes I am tempted to trust the secret to Lady Powis.--She is
compassionate;--she would even risk her own peace to preserve
mine.--Again the thoughts of involving her in fresh perplexities
determines me against it.

Had my father been acquainted with that part of Sir James's character
which concerned his son, I am convinc'd he would have made some
restrictions in regard to the explicit obedience he enjoined.--But all
was hushed whilst Mr. Powis continued on his travels; nor, until he
settled abroad, did any one suspect there had been a family
disagreement:--_even_ at _this_ time the whole affair is not generally
known.--The name of the lady to whom he was obliged to make proposals,
is in particular carefully concealed.--I, who from ten years old have
been bred up with them, am an entire stranger to it.--_Perhaps_ no part
of the affair would ever have transpired, had not Sir James made some
discoveries, in the first agitation of his passion, before a large
company, when he received an account of Mr. Powis's being appointed to
the government of ----. No secret can be safe in a breast where every
passage is not well guarded against an enemy which, like lightning,
throws up all before it.

Let me not forget to tell you, amongst a multiplicity of concerns