young lady; and, I dare say, it is only now in seeing them both together,
and comparing the two, that he feels what a treasure he has lost. Well,
what do you advise, Mary? Mainwaring, no doubt, is bound in honour to
Miss Clavering; but she will be sure to discover, sooner or later, the
state of his feelings, and then I tremble for both. I'm sure she will
never be happy, while he will be wretched; and Susan--I dare not think
upon Susan; she has a cough that goes to my heart."

"So she has; that cough--you don't know the money I spend on black-
currant jelly! What's my advice? Why, I'd speak to Miss Clavering at
once, if I dared. I'm sure love will never break her heart; and she's so
proud, she'd throw him off without a sigh, if she knew how things stood."

"I believe you are right," said Mr. Fielden; "for truth is the best
policy, after all. Still, it's scarce my business to meddle; and if it
were not for Susan-- Well, well, I must think of it, and pray Heaven to
direct me."

This conference suffices to explain to the reader the stage to which the
history of Lucretia had arrived. Willingly we pass over what it were
scarcely possible to describe,--her first shock at the fall from the
expectations of her life; fortune, rank, and what she valued more than
either, power, crushed at a blow. From the dark and sullen despair into
which she was first plunged, she was roused into hope, into something
like joy, by Mainwaring's letters. Never had they been so warm and so
tender; for the young man felt not only poignant remorse that he had been
the cause of her downfall (though she broke it to him with more delicacy
than might have been expected from the state of her feelings and the
hardness of her character), but he felt also imperiously the obligations
which her loss rendered more binding than ever. He persuaded, he urged,