might regard Melliphant as a friend, but as a lover never!
With the greatest circumspection therefore she became as industrious to shun every occasion that might lead him to a further declaration of attachment, as he, on the other hand, was in seeking for it.
He left her under the impression that she was invincible; he cursed her prudery, as he called it, and that invariable self-possession of virtue that enthroned her, so effectually shielding her from his designs; that barrier, which he had been so long aiming to remove. Were there no inlets by which he could enter, take her off her guard, and at once disarm her?
"Had she been less difficult to subdue," ejaculated he, in all the fury of disappointed hope, "my passion would have been less violent! 'Tis by this tormenting resistance to my every effort that she haunts me as she does, by night and by day."
General De Brooke being anxious to return to the peaceful scenes of Glamorgan, his return thither having been so frequently deferred, to give himself a foretaste of the pleasure he should experience when the spring months arrived, he resolved to accompany Dr. Lovesworth in an excursion he intended to his Hermitage. The Bower moreover required some new arrangements previous to the return of his family to that delightful spot.
Perhaps no event could have happened more op-
