Star.
London, England, 1826-05-22 00:00:00

with me; but, as I was always delifested with her, who
had-taken no pains to please, she might well be pleased
with me, who had spared none to captivate. I cannot
explain this secret of her heart.; but Istate the fact, ac
cording to my belief and her assurance.
On reaching Huddersfield, my supposition of her
regret at the thought of our separation was confirmed'
by her high spirits whilst we were at the inn there—
after I had told her that we had no chance of seeing
her father till the next day. We staid an hour, I be-
lieve, at the inn, where we ate, drank, talked, laughed,
and almost played, as if we had been on a party of
pleasure.
It was then dark. She expected to travel alone with
me all night; and she knew neither to what place she
was going, nor with what object so strange a journey
had been undertaken. But she did continue the journey,
n.,t merely without a sign of hesitation, but with every
mark of delight at our incessant conversation, and the
hurry and excitement of the whole adventure. At Hali-
fax, my servant, on whom fright and fatigue had brought
a fit of the gout, remained behind. Openly, and so that
she must have heard me, but in French (which I did
not then know she perfectly understands). I gave him
orders to return to London. He asked me whether he
should engage " family rooms" for me in the Brunswick
Hotel? I said " Yes: but do not tell anybody that I am
married, and go to bed and stay in bed, ill or well, till
you see me three days hence." This, I suspect, did par-
tially open her eyes to my ultimate object; for soon
afterwards, as I' was talking to my brother, in French,
about her, and the time when we might reach Scotland,
she desired us not to 14 tell secrets" in French, unless we
wi •hed her to understand them.

Be this as it may, we continued to travel through the'
night, occupied as before with incessant conversation.
Her spirits never flagged for a moment. Everything,
almost, was converted into an excuse for laughing. The
all but dangerous rapidity with which' the Yu, kshire
postboys drove through the darkness; the significant
requests of more than one landlady on the road, that we
would honour them with our company on our return ;
my struggles, after two sleepless nights, with an almost
'overpowering drowsiness; various petty accidents; and
the probability, ascertained during the night, that the
carriage would break into pieces before daylight, all
furnished us with reasons, or rather excuses, for being
so merry, that any one who could have seen and heard
us, must have been satisfied of the perfect goodwill of
both parties to lose no time in reaching Gretna-green.
_ _

I, of course, continued to direct my whole atterition to
improving her partiality for me, not merely by sharing
and encouraging her joyous good humour, but also by
entering into all her feelings, and by bestowing upon her
such personal attentions and caresses as, without being
indelicate, or calculated to alarm her modesty, were an,
unequivocal declaration of my wishes and intentions.
And I undoubtedly succeeded; .1., before we reached
Kendal, she treated me with all the affectionate confi-
dence and gratifying intimacy that a cherished fi iend
and admitted lover could have expected from her.

At Kendal, after breakfast, I was about to undeceive her, to
explain the stratagem I had used, to order to know her, and make
myself known to her, and to attempt, by a common course of sup-
plication and argument, to persuade her to marry me.
The Devil rem:nded me that, besides the means of
persuasion furnished by our already established inti-
macy, I had a very powerful argument to use. She half
passed one whole night with me! and I could haw
urged that, for her own sake, she would do well to
become my wife without delay. True it was, that I bad
treated her with the utmost delicacy, and her conscience
would have been clear though she had not married me.
But, then, there was an ill-natured world, which, know-
ing how much I had done, would never give me credit
for any degree of forbearance, and would laugh at any
saving declaration of mine, as the mere result of fear or
repentance. The argument wax, indeed, at least to a
gentlewoman, tremendously powerful ; but I felt an
invincible repegnance to using it. A romantic fit (for
which no stranger will give me either blame or credit)
tame upon me ; and under its influence, I dreaded
to appear a brute in the eyes of this sweet gill, who was
already so well inclined to like me, and whom, had I
used that ungenerous argument, I should have married
by a means which promised to insure for me her dislike,
instead of the terwer love that I then felt certain of in-
spiting her with.
Still what other chance had I of obtaining her free,
1 and full, and openly expressed approval of an imme-
diate marriage? Even though, as I half suspected, she
should not in heart object to becoming mine, she
must, for the sake of her pride, have made objections
which I could not have answered; and it therefore
behoved me to furnish her with some excuse for yield-
ing to my wishes. There was no time to lose. Whe-
ther or not I should use the ungenerous argument, I had
passed one night with her. I had gone too far to recede,
if it were pos-ible to advance by any means short of
constraint. The ungenerous argument recurred to me
continually ; but I always repelled it, and sought tiil
my head ached for some other means of inducing and
excusing her approval of an immediate marriage, with-
out destroying her good opinion of me.
At last the device struck me, which I ultimately used with suc-
cess; and I declare that that pretexrwas employed, not as the surest
and easiest means of petsuading bar, but as the only one which
would enable me to marry her without, in tie very act of marriage,
risking the loss of her good opinion.
She entered at once, and I may say eagerly,iato what
she thought a scheme for securing her father's fortune.
There was no holding back, no hesitation. "Yes,'' she
said, " with pleasure, for papa's sake." She evidently
exulted at the idea of being useful to her parents; and
expressed so beautifully her admirable feelings towards
them, that I was very near clasping her in nay arms
and betraying all.
Here, la order to skew that I am not the ruthless ravisher. and
that she is net the consummate feel, that we have been described,
I must proceed with considerable
As soon as she had expressed not only her consent,
but her wish to marry me, I said to her, " Ellen, you
have one other important consideration. If you tea
any repugnance towards me; if you do not feel that
you should be able to love me, and to be very happy in
living with me entirely henceforth, tell me so without
hesitation. There is no absolute necessity for our mar-
riage. I beg of you to reflect most carefully upon this
point, and to examine your feelings towards me, You
have seen very little of me, but still we are become as
intimate as if we had known each other' for years. I
hope, and do not doubt, to treat you always, for your
own sake, with more than the tenderness which your,
peculiar situation has hitherto obtained from me. But'
think; and do not decide rashly. If you dislike of
object to marry me, say so, and 1 will take you back to
Shtigley, when your father's affairs must be arranged
in some other way."
this speech, which was dictated by a vain wish to
satisfy myself that I had a large share in her decision.
she listened to with the deepest attention. I would not