At length it came, and with it a confirmation of even worse than the most terrible of her apprehensions had suggested. The sight of her own letters, on her opening it, almost threw her into a swoon; but, when her streaming eyes had greedily devoured the contents of the billet that accompanied them, excess of desperation struck her for some moments stupid, and rendered her mind inactive as her frame.

But, when awakened from this lethargy of silent grief, she felt all the horrors of a fate she had so much dreaded. Frustrated at once in every hope that love or interest had presented to her, words cannot paint the wildness of her fancy; she tore her hair and garments, and scarce spared that face she had taken so much pains to ornament, for wanting charms to secure the conquest it had gained.

But with the more violence these tourbillions of the mind rage for a while, the sooner they subside, and all is hushed again; as I remember to have somewhere read—

'After a tempest, when the winds are laid,
The calm sea wonders at the wreck it made.'

So this unhappy and abandoned creature, too much deserving of the fate she met with, having exhausted her whole stock of tears, and wasted all the breath that life could spare in fruitless exclamations, the passions which had raised these commotions in her soul became more weak, and the beguiler Hope once more returned, to lull her wearied spirits into a short-lived ease.

She now saw the folly of venting her rage upon herself—that to give way to grief and despair would avail her nothing, but only serve to render her more miserable—that, instead of sitting tamely down, and meanly lamenting her misfortune in the loss of a lover, on whom she had built so much, she ought rather to exert all the courage, resolution, and artifice, she was mistress of, in contriving some way of preventing it, if possible.

'He is not yet married!' said she—'the irrevocable words are not yet past! I have already broke off his courtship to one woman—why may I not be as successful in doing so with another? He cannot love the present engrosser of his heart more than he did Miss Betsy Thoughtless! It is worth, at least, the pains of an attempt!'

The first step she had to take towards the execution of her design, was to find out the name, condition, and dwelling, of her happy rival; and this, she thought, there would be no great difficulty in doing, as she doubted not but Mr. Trueworth visited her every day, and it would be easy for her to employ a person to watch where he went, and afterwards to make the proper enquiries.

But, in the mean time, it required some consideration how to behave to that gentleman, so as to preserve in him some sort of esteem for her, without which, she rightly judged, it would be impossible for her ever to recover his love, in case she should be so fortunate as to separate him from the present object of his flame.

She knew very well, that all testimonies of despair in a woman no longer loved, only create uneasiness in the man who occasioned it, and but serve to make him more heartily wish to get rid of her; she, therefore, found it best, as it certainly was, to pretend to fall in with Mr. Trueworth's way of thinking—seem to be convinced by his reasons, and ready to submit to whatever suited with his interest or convenience. It was some time before she could bring herself into a fit temper for this sort of dissimulation; but she at last arrived at it, and gave a proof how great a proficient she was in it by the following lines.