 a nature that reflected not only infamy on myself but disgrace and contamination

on all who had the misfortune of being allied to me: that he had endeavoured all in his power, not from regard to my fate but from anxiety to preserve the family honour untarnished, to persuade the farmer and his wife to silence, in hopes that the horrid train of iniquity which had led to such calamities, might be at least in part a secret from the world: but the old people, above being either bribed or soothed into this measure, held their determination unalterable of vindicating the injured fame of their deceased daughter, and were in possession of sufficient evidence to prove the truth of that unmanly and detestable transaction: that for his part, he could not help approving their inflexibility, and was not even certain if he was justifiable in having attempted to skreen a wretch, though his own son, from the assured consequences of blasted and irretrievable honour, which ever receives

its due punishment in the contempt, abhorrence, and desertion of the world; and which being driven from society and shunned by mankind, is forced to hide its miserable head in obscurity, where not one ray of comfort alleviates the just though rigorous sentence.
Happy had it been, continued his Lordship, for his whole family, had he breathed his last ere he cast so foul a stain on all connected with him. As to his present illness, all that can be wished for by his unfortunate relations is, that time may be granted him to repent of the many evils into which his misconduct has involved them and himself. He next mentioned Lady Linrose. My dear Lady Linrose! At the sound of her name I shuddered. Let me know no further, cried I to Benseley, whom I had constrained unwillingly to read aloud the letter to me: yet the next moment my anxiety being insupportable, I insisted on

hearing all. She had been violently ill, had been given over by her physicians, and was still in the most alarming situation, though for the present the fever appeared to have given way to medicine. But what was even ten thousand times worse than this, and rendered me absolutely frantic with despair, her mind no less than her tender frame had suffered. She never had been herself since that fatal, that accursed day. If the wretch, said my father in his letter, is insensible to the many shocking calamities which his crimes have produced, you may add to the list that of having driven to madness the loveliest and most amiable of her sex.
In the state I then was, it may easily be concluded that
