for you; and, as your friend Mrs. Stokes informed--"

"Mrs. Stokes is not my friend, but the basest and most barbarous of
enemies," cried Alicia.

"Why, now, this is strange! She was your friend yesterday; and how do I
know but a woman may change as quick, and as short, about her lovers, as
about her friends?"

"I never can change: fear nothing," said Alicia, tenderly.

"But let me finish what I was saying about Mrs. Stokes; she told me
something about one Mr. Marvel, I think they call him; now what is all
that?"

"Nothing: he is a foolish young man, who was desperately in love with
me, that's all, and offered to marry me; but, as I told him, I am
superior to mercenary considerations."

"And is the affair broke off, then?" said Wright, looking her full in
the face. "That's in one word what I must be sure of: for I am not a man
that would choose to be jilted. Sit you down and pen me a farewell to
that same foolish young fellow. I am a plain-spoken man, and now you
have my mind."

Miss Barton was now persuaded that all Wright's coldness had proceeded
from jealousy: blinded by her passions, and alarmed by the idea that
this was the moment in which she must either secure or for ever abandon
Wright and his fortune, she consented to his proposal, and wrote the
following tender adieu to Marvel: