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N the assemblies, lectures and entertainments, where my evenings were chiefly spent, and in the various excursions and parties formed to witness or engage in the races and other exercises that take up so much of the time of the Colymbians, I frequently encountered Lily. I had quite overcome my passion for her, and felt no desire to avail myself of her conditional offer to be mine, should she and her husband not agree. It appeared to me, indeed, that they agreed well enough, and I would not for worlds have done anything to interfere with their domestic arrangements. I did not avoid my former flame, but on the other hand I did not seek her society, as I had done before that fatal evening. She perceived my coldness, and, far from resenting it, she once said, "I suppose, from your manner, you no longer think of me as a future wife, and indeed I am very well content with Phoebus, and he, I think, is equally so with me."

I was, I confess, greatly relieved to hear this, as it was not the least to my taste, nor at all consonant with my ideas of morality, to take away a man's wife from him. I intimated as much in the most delicate manner to Lily. She said:—