 wish to hear you: as it is, spare me, I conjure you, on a subject so hateful. I have nothing to reproach you with but a reserve which led me to deceive myself.—Adieu, I promise you inviolable silence.—He who once hoped to constitute your felicity, disdains to interfere with it. Yet one truth I ought perhaps to apprize you of: your happy, your favored lover, is married; think not I wish to reap any advantage from this information—never more shall I breathe a vow at your feet.—Oh, Mary! you have undone me!" He wrung my hands in an agony of passion, and rushed through the garden to conceal the sobs which continued to pierce my heart through my ear. What a night did I pass!—sad prelude to so many miserable ones. I readily absented myself the next day at the Prince's usual hour of visiting us. I never saw him afterwards without pain, humiliation,

and constraint; though he omitted nothing likely to reconcile me to himself. During the fatal illness into which he fell, how continually did my heart reproach me with increasing, if not causing it? and how deeply was my injustice to his merit punished, in the mortifying conviction that Somerset had dared to deceive me? —What prayers did I offer up for Henry's recovery —What vows to atone for my error, by a life devoted to him! Alas, I was not worthy a lover so noble; and heaven recalled his purer essence, while yet unsullied. The sense of a hopeless and unworthy passion mingled with the deep grief I could not but feel for his loss. A sickliness and disgust succeeded—rank, royalty, distinction, every worldly advantage combined, could not have dissipated the gloom of my mind, or reconciled me for a moment to society. I took no pleasure in the hopes, you, my dear, my generous mother, cherished for me; but I would not be ungrateful, and therefore concealed

my ideas. Thus impressed, what merit was there in that philosophy which enabled me to become your comforter under a reverse I scarcely felt? —Oh, that my errors, my misfortunes, had ended here—that I had breathed my last on your revered bosom while yet unconscious of wounding it! When the vain hope of freedom made you solicit for a limited portion of air and exercise, how could you foresee the fatal consequences of that periodical indulgence! In the first of these solitary walks, Somerset presented himself before me; not the crested, aspiring favorite; but the self-accusing, the pale, the humble lover
