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136 he could not answer for the extremity to which despair might drive him.

There are few, perhaps, so wholly lost and sunk in evil, as not to possess some latent good. Perhaps that quality which existed, in spite of the equipoise against it, in Sir Howard, was fidelity in friendship. Though of a temper avaricious and covetous, yet he never hesitated to perform, for the liberation of a friend in distress, an act of generosity. Through his zeal and activity, therefore, Melliphant was set free; and the first use he made of his liberty, was to fly to the house of Mrs. Belmour, in order to obtain accounts of Rosilia, who, some hours previously, had been conveyed home by her mother, dejected in spirits, but at the same time with a heart full of gratitude to that Power which had protected her in so trying a moment, and saved her the misery of engaging herself by an indissoluble promise, which her sense of honour would have rendered irrevocable.

It was then near ten at night, and upon receiving the desired information, Melliphant hastily left the house, to wander near that spot containing an object who had attained such an astonishing empire over his fate. He rivetted his sight upon that window, where, at the midnight hour, he had once beheld her, to him the only fair object in creation, and the only one capable of fixing his regard. Thus intensely wrapt in thought, her form more brilliant to his imagination than the starry heavens, a light glimmers in her chamber: it is she, it is she herself, he