. He had been banished his country upon suspicion of
religious and political heresy, and his estates confiscated. With this only
child, like Prospero in the Tempest, he had withdrawn himself to one of the most
obscure and uncultivated regions of the world. Very soon however after his
arrival in Wales, he had been siezed with a malignant fever, which carried him
off in three days. He died possessed of no other property, than a few jewels,
and a bill of credit, to no considerable amount, upon an English banker.
    Here then was the infant Laura, left in a foreign country, and without a
single friend. The father of her present husband, was led, by motives of pure
humanity, to seek to mitigate the misfortunes of the dying Italian. Though a
plain, uninstructed man, with no extraordinary refinement of intellect, there
was something in his countenance, that determined the stranger, in his present
forlorn and melancholy situation, to make him his executor, and the guardian of
his daughter. The Neapolitan understood enough of English, to explain his wishes
to this friendly attendant of his death-bed. As his circumstances were narrow,
the servants of the stranger, two Italians, a male and a female, were sent back
to their own country, soon after the death of their master.
    Laura was at this time eight years of age. At these tender years she had
been susceptible of little direct instruction; and, as she grew up, even the
memory of her father, became, from year to year, more vague and indistinct in
her mind. But there was something she derived from her father, whether along
with the life he bestowed, or as the consequence of his instruction and manners,
which no time could efface. Every added year of her life, contributed to develop
the fund of her accomplishments. She read, she observed, she reflected. Without
instructors, she taught herself to draw, to sing, and to understand the more
polite European languages. As she had no society, in this remote situation, but
that of peasants, she had no idea of honour or superiority to be derived from
her acquisitions; but pursued them from a secret taste, and as the sources of
personal enjoyment.
    A mutual attachment gradually arose, between her and the only son of her
guardian. His father led him, from early youth, to the labours and the sports of
the field, and there was little congeniality between his pursuits and those of
Laura. But this was a defect that she was slow to discover. She had never been
accustomed to society
