 not deceive me—Have you ever felt for me those sentiments with which Augustus Harley inspired you?'

'Certainly not—I do not pretend to it—neither ought you to wish it. My first attachment was the morbid excess of a distempered imagination. Liberty, reason, virtue, usefulness, were the offerings I carried to its shrine. It preyed incessantly upon my heart, I drank up its vital spirit, it became a vice from its excess—it was a pernicious, though a sublime, enthusiasm—its ravages are scarcely to be remembered without shuddering—all the strength, the dignity, the powers, of my mind, melted before it! Do you wish again to see me the slave of my passions—do you regret, that I am restored to reason? To you I owe every thing—life, and its comforts, rational enjoyments, and the opportunity of usefulness. I feel for you all the affection that a reasonable and a virtuous mind ought to feel—that affection which is compatible with the fulfilling of other duties. We are guilty of vice and selfishness when we yield ourselves up to unbounded desires, and suffer our hearts to be wholly absorbed by one object, however meritorious that object may be.'

'Ah! how calmly you reason,—while I listen to you I cannot help loving and admiring you, but I must ever hate that accursed Harley—No! I am not satisfied—and I sometimes regret that I ever beheld you.'

Many months glided away with but little interruptions to our tranquillity.—A remembrance of the past would at times obtrude itself, like the broken recollections of a feverish vision. To banish these painful retrospections, I hastened to employ myself; every hour was devoted to active usefulness, or to social and rational recreation.

I became a mother; in performing the duties of a nurse, my affections were awakened to new and sweet emotions.—The father of my child appeared more respectable in my eyes, became more dear to me: the engaging smiles of my little Emma repayed me for every pain and every anxiety. While I beheld my husband caress his infant, I tasted a pure, a chaste, an ineffable pleasure.

 

 

CHAPTER XX

About six weeks after my recovery from childbed, some affairs of importance called Mr Montague to London. Three days after he had quitted me, as, bending over the cradle of my babe, I contemplated in silence its tranquil slumbers, I was alarmed by an uncommon confusion in the lower part of the house. Hastening down stairs, to enquire into the cause, I was informed—that a gentleman, in passing through the town, had been thrown from his horse, that he was taken up senseless
