To the Chevalier Dubois, at Malta.

And do you really, my dear Dubois, believe that I am likely to change the object of my passion? What can I have said, that can induce you to such a belief? And Madamoiselle St. Clare is the person you have pitched on? Do you suppose then that I am determined, to fall in love always, where a prior prepossession precludes all hope? Be assured that can never happen a second time.

Indeed I am so well acquainted with my own heart, that I may venture to affirm it would never have been the captive of Zilia, lovely as she is, had I suspected any pre-engagement; but it yielded to her charms, when I thought her as free as myself; and was flattered by the pleasing delusion, that the little services I had been able to render her, would incline her to favour my pretensions. The frankness of her manners, the softness of her deportment, and the winning sweetness of her looks, served to confirm me in what I so ardently wished: nor was she sufficiently conversant in our language to undeceive me, till it was too late to banish her beauteous image from my mind. However, I sacrificed my love to her happiness; and went so far as to use every means in my power, to secure to her, her favoured lover; till he, like the base Judean, threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe. Hopes I conceived from that circumstance, which certainly had no foundation, as experience has proved; and could I cherish any, the conversation I lately heard would totally destroy them.

Indulging my contemplative disposition in a walk by moonlight a few evenings since, a train of serious reflections which that produced, occupied my mind to such a degree, that I prolonged it beyond the time I designed; and having a key, which gives me access by a private door into my sister's garden, I let myself in, at an hour when I imagined every one, but my servant who waited my coming, in my apartment, were at rest.