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fear of a disclosure from Charles's being transmewed into as Doctor Boston, professor and lecturer on botany. The admiral, at dinner, congratulated his daughter, on the apparent good sense and grave deportment of her preceptor. Caroline was very much embarrassed, but she believed it was a crumb of bread that made her cough; the blushes which discoloured her lovely cheeks, received any explication but that of conscious participation in the imposture of romance, on the most indulgent and good-natured parent.

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Next morning, Charles, as the professor, came in a hackney coach, the fare of which he had previously paid, in order that he might not be detained at the street-door; and he was ushered into the library of the admiral as Doctor Boston, as formerly he had been into that of Caroline in the character of the hairdresser.

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The admiral had been obliged to go out on some very pressing matters at the Admiralty, before the lecturer came, but the proper books and cases of plants, &c. were laid out on a large table and tables; but how much, after opening one volume, or what these interesting beings studied, there was no synopsis kept, by which the writer of these memoirs could inform his readers,

Other feelings and other discourse than those of preceptor and pupil, possessed the frames, and occupied the time of Charles and Caroline. Caroline rung the bell; the footman conducted the doctor to the coach-door with as much unsuspicious ceremony, as he had with cautious etiquette watched him in his quondam character of Bobbin John; the brave lieutenant left the library, and passed through the lobby, and into the coach that had

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been ordered for him, with as much professional dignity as the tutor of a princess: indeed the farce was carried on with amazing address.

CHAPTER XVII.

Therefore, ladies,

Our love being yours, the error that love makes
Is likewise yours: we to ourselves prove false,
By being once false for ever to be true

To those that make us both,-fair ladies,

you! SHAKSPEARE.

THE plot went on for some days with as much secrecy as a plot could be conducted; but the ill star that guides all plots hovered over this.

At Hammersmith, there lived a celebrated botanist with whom the admiral was on the most familiar terms. On this man, whom many of the nobility of the island patronized, the admiral waited, and requested, as a particular favour, that he would do him the honour to call at his house, next morning, about

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eleven, and see Doctor Boston, under whom he had placed Miss Springfield. The next morning Mr. Leaf of Hammersmith waited on the admiral, and they both repaired to the library. At one entrance to the library there were double doors, so that no sound of voices within could be heard in the passage; this was a precaution the admiral took, not to be disturbed: the other entrance communicated with the admiral's dressing-room, and with the dressing-room there was a communication to the breakfast-room..

In this undisturbed retreat and library, Charles and Caroline, in the confi dence of their security from intrusion; for the visit of Mr. Leaf had not been previously announced to her, and Harriet, who was almost always on the watch, was this morning arranging Miss's dress in her chamber;-in this retreat, then, the faithful lovers were

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