I heard my friend, indeed, with respect, but not with conviction, and the first moment that I saw the Count again, one look, one tender expression, overthrew all the poor Abbe's arguments, and confirmed the seducer's power over my heart. My prudent guardians saw too plainly the danger of my situation, and despairing of gaining any ascendancy over me, they one day took an opportunity of an early visit, when I was not in the way to talk to him, in a manner they conceived to be their duty, and to request that he would refrain from any future visits.
He was too closely pressed to allow of any disguise or subterfuge, and was at length driven to own his attachment to me in very unequivocal terms. He said, "that he had a small independency from his father securely settled. He had also great expectations from a relation, exceeding old, whose death might daily be expected, besides what he must enjoy hereafter as his paternal fortune; but that he was sensible his father must, and would, disapprove of his marriage with so young a
