Page:Modern literature (1804 Volume 2).djvu/141

This page needs to be proofread.

one, returned. The next morning, at breakfast, inquiring where his sister was, he learned that she had stayed with Maria, who was taken ill.—"Taken ill?" said Hamilton, alarmed,—"my beloved Maria ill?" and without waiting for any answer, ran out. Etterick was breakfasting in his room, and his daughter attending him; so that with Mrs. Hamilton, there were only her father and brother. "I have suspected," said she, "from the first time that I saw them together, that William and Maria Mortimer are fondly attached to each other. She is a charming girl; but William, who is so very fine a youth, might certainly do a great deal better in the way of fortune." "He certainly might," said Doctor Wentbridge; "and besides, he is a youth of great talents, and might so connect himself, as to be the means of rising in the state.—What say