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THE STORY OF MARIANNE..

AS I. devoted most of my after

noons to CLERMONT, and his family,-on calling in, this evening, I found AMELIA had fent MARIANNE to the rooms, with some young people of her acquaintance. - I have almost been compelled, says she, to force her out;-she loves retirement much more than I wish her to do - I think her spirits, though commonly very good, require sometimes the relaxation of public scenes, to divert them from the recollection of domestic events, which are every now and then

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painful to her. — And yet, if it is not to accompany me, it is with the utmost difficulty I can. prevail on her to mix in the world.

I be

-I believe, in general, faid I, Madam, that young and ingenuous minds, whose expectations of it have been fomewhat deceived, are not easily brought to be on good terms with it again:-the hope of youth is ardent, and its sensibility proportionably

acute.

-I fear, indeed, returned AMELIA, that fuch have been her impreffions; and as she has a heart fashioned for all the virtues of society, I most earnestly wish to fee them effaced.-I know the entertains the highest opinion of you, and is much flattered by the attention you have shewn her;-a few hints therefore from you, when opportunity offers, would, I am perfuaded, have great weight with her ;and as we are now alone, if my bro

ther will take up the news-paper,

and

and fufpend his party for half an Hour, I will. add a few particulars to the general idea I have given you before, of her situation; and she shall. know from me, that you are apprized of the whole.

-When my much-loved friend, her mother, died, she left only two children, - MARIANNE, who had then just compleated her fixteenth year, and her brother EDMUND, who was three-and-twenty; - but so oppofite were their characters, that no one who knew them intimately, could have supposed they sprang from the fame parents. She, all tenderness and undisguised nature;-he, a compound of artifice, and meanness, - guiding every action by avarice and interest, but varnishing his deportment with fo much times, when he found opportunities that were favourable, he would put on a dejected air, -lament the concern he felt to part with the family eftate, -which he acquainted her he must be under the neceffity of doing, from his inability to keep it up, with fuch a heavy charge as her fortune was, on it; which infinitely exceeded in proportion, the usual dispositions made to daughters, that he had befides contracted feveral large debts in his father's life-time, which would overshadow all his future pursuits, and in conclufion, that he saw no method by which he could be extricated from the many difficulties that pressed him, unless MARIANNE would, from her affection to him, relinquish part of her claim. He added, that no one was so

near to her, as himself,-nor did his

modesty modesty fcruple to hint, that half the sum his father had bequeathed her, would command whatever a reafonable woman could require.

MARIANNE, who knew that the exact parfimony which directed EDMUND'S conduct, by no means tallied with the declaration he had made concerning his private incumbrances, often felt the awkwardness of her fituation; it startled-it embarrassed her; and her benevolence, ever more awake than her caution, prompted her one day, when he had renewed the same subject, to say, in general terms, that a brother's happiness could not but influence her's-that the generofity of her father had been his own free act, and till the production of his will, totally unknown to her, -and that, should any event in life arife,

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