; but this you may bear, and from the conscious superiority of your mind, may bear perhaps with indifference; but ah! Miss Seymour, there are wounds yet more bitter, feelings yet more keen, which I have endured, and which I heartily pray you may never know.
Heaven only knows, thought I to myself, whether these bitter, keen, and heartfelt sufferings, may not yet prove mine.
Yes cried I, to the amiable, unhappy girl, taking hold of her hand with unfeigned compassion, I am sensible you claim too justly the superiority in affliction. My heart feels sincerely for what yours has endured. You have my warmest sympathy; and if the demand is not importunate, and the recital will not prove a probe rather than a relief, will you gratify me so far as to unburthen your mind to me.
It is long, long, cried she, softened

at my request, since my heart has experienced the solace of confidence. The world turns wich disgust from the oppressed; it flies distress as if contagious; and prosperity beholds it as a frightfull picture presented to its view to check dissipation and to frown on enjoyment.
She then told me that when she was yet at school, Captain Wilmot, at that time a young Ensign, and nearly related to her, used frequently to spend some weeks at her father's vicarage for the amusement of shooting; and that during the holidays, when she always returned home, he constantly paid her the most flattering attention, till she confessed he made some impression on her heart. Being however hardly fifteen, and little of her age, she looked upon herself as a mere girl, and the school duties generally drove her cousin from her thoughts and conquered her attachment.
At seventeen she quitted school entirely.

It was then that the abovementioned diversion furnished a pretence for the Captain's spending almost the whole shooting season at their house; a circumstance that the young lady suspected proceeded from a tenderer motive. In fact he had been but a short time there, when he took an opportunity to disclose his passion, which met with all the success he could have wished.
Gained by his early and continued partiality, accustomed as her near relation to see him in the most favourable light and to hear him favourably spoken of by others, she was blind to the insipidity and conceited folly of his character. Habit and affection equally conspired to conceal his errors from her view; and if she caught occasionally a transient glimpse of his imperfections, his unbounded professions of love, added to her tenderness for him, cast a partial
