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306 and plans, little suspecting that he had been made the dupe of an artful and designing woman.

While Harcourt had been thus unsuccessful in gaining access to Rosilia, it happened that Sir Howard Sinclair did so without difficulty. In combining his schemes for this purpose, his first object was to obtain an introduction to the General, which, from his extensive acquaintance, he found no difficulty in accomplishing. An exchange of cards being the result, the next step of Sir Howard, on a better acquaintance, was to prevail on the General to form one amongst a small party of gentlemen he had invited to dine with him; but which the General, though sensible of the attention paid him, politely declined, under the plea of not wishing to break through the rules he had established of not accepting invitations unaccompanied by his wife and daughter.

Rather than be discomforted by this failure of ready invention, Sir Howard turned it to his profit, by resolving to form amongst his more particular friends a party, in which he could, with all seeming propriety, invite Mrs. De Brooke and Rosilia to accompany the General, whose objection to leaving home being thus obviated, might yield a willing assent. Not long recovered from an attack of indisposition Sir Howard had brought