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and to avoid it lest a blessing such as I now experience should fall to my lot! Ah, Lady Aurora! by the pleasure,—the transport, rather, with which your sudden sight has made me appear to forget myself, judge my anguish, my desolation, to be banished from your society, and banished as a criminal!"
Lady Aurora shuddered and hid her face. "O Miss Ellis!" she cried, "what a word! never may I hear it,—so applied,—again, lest it should alienate me from those I ought to respect and esteem! and you so good, so excellent, would be sorry to see me estrange myself, even though it were for your own sake, from those to whom I owe gratitude and attachment. I must try to shew my admiration of Miss Ellis in a manner that Miss Ellis herself will not condemn. And will not that be by speaking to her without any disguise? And will she not have the goodness to encourage me to do it? For the world I would not take a liberty with her;—
