 or raising my uncertain eye toward the blue vault of Heaven, found in the all-chearing sun a stranger.—Alas! my sister, look no more in this sad recital, for the equal-minded

rational Ellinor you once saw me; sensa∣tions too acute for either endurance or expression, from this fatal period blotted every noble facility, often substituting impulse for judgment. Always sensible of my wandering the moment it was past, shame continually succeeded, and united every misery of madness and reason.
Spring reviving all nature, extends its genial influence even to the withered heart.
My intervals became more calm and frequent. I gathered strength to walk into the garden—there I slowly retraced to myself the fatal whole, and began to find, or fancy it more supportable. That I had been a dupe to Elizabeth and her minister, was too obvious; but I was wil∣ling to acquit the weak man, perhaps sufficiently punished in a wife like me, of having been a confederate in their plots. I had long been the object of his choice, and it is a common error among his sex to be careless of the means by which their views succeed, provided they attain them. But my feeble effort to∣ward

recovery requiring every indul∣gence, I wrote to Lord Arlington, as∣suring him, "I would make the best use of my returning reason, in forming my heart to the future performance of those pain∣ful duties, a combination of fatal circum∣stances had imposed on it; but that the task was too difficult not to claim every allowance on his part; and concluded with hoping, solitude would enable me one day to meet him with feelings less embittered."
With my intellectual powers too re∣turned my affections. The mystery of your fate, my sister, and that of Lord Leices∣ter, racked my weary imagination in vain. I enclosed in the letter to Lord Arlington a billet to Lady Pembroke. It contained only an enquiry for you.
When these letters were dispatched, I bent my every thought to fulfilling the promise made in the first. A thou∣sand times on my knees I besought the Almighty to confirm those upright senti∣ments he alone could inspire; I strove to obliterate every remembrance of the hu∣man

means by which his will was effect∣ed, and considering it only in the light of his will, tried meekly to submit to it. Alas, the answer of Lady Pembroke shook every just determination—astonishment, terror, and affection were obvious in every line of it—eagerly she solicited news of myself, and the incomprehensible means which first restored me to St. Vincent's Abbey, as well as those which fixed me there by so extraordinary
