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on, or of any of those in the neighbourhood; for with their wealth

and ht be looked for in any quarter This offer,

and their sound advice strengthened ave Don

Fernando a word in reply that could hold out to him any hope of success,

however remote

"All this caution of mine, which he must have taken for coyness, had

apparently the effect of increasing his wanton appetite--for that is the

naive to his passion for me; had it been what he declared it to be,

you would not know of it now, because there would have been no occasion

to tell you of it At length he learned that e forpossession of me, or at least to secure additional protectors

to watch over ence or suspicion ht, as I was in my chamber with no other companion

than a damsel aited on me, with the doors carefully locked lest h any carelessness, I know not nor can

conceive how it happened, but, with all this seclusion and these

precautions, and in the solitude and silence ofbefore me, a vision that so astounded ue of speech I had no power to utter a cry,

nor, I think, did he give me ti me in his arms (for, overwhelmed as I was, I

was powerless, I say, to help an to make such professions

to me that I know not how falsehood could have had the power of dressing

them up to seem so like truth; and the traitor contrived that his tears

should vouch for his words, and his sighs for his sincerity