 I once was.—Yes, yes,—it will be so: I have known a great deal of sorrow—let me then indulge the little ray of pleasure that breaks in upon me when I think that you will not resist my dying prayer, but bestow on my child the long arrears of tenderness due to me.

'Yes, yes, you will receive, you will be kind to her; and by so doing you will make me ample amends for all the sorrow which your harshness caused me when we met last.—That was a dreadful day! How you frowned on me! I did not think you could have frowned so dreadfully—but then I was uninjured by affliction, unaltered by illness. Were you to see me now, you would not have the heart to frown on me: and yet my letters being repeatedly returned, and even the last unnoticed and unanswered, though it told you that even on your own conditions I could now claim your pardon, for that I had been "wretched in love," and had experienced "the anguish of being forsaken, despised, and disgraced in the eye of the world," proves but too surely that the bitterness of resentment is not yet passed!—But on my death-bed you promised to see and forgive me—and I am there, my mother!! Yet will I not claim that promise;—I will not weaken, by directing it towards myself, the burst of sorrow, of too late regret, of self-upbraidings, and long-restrained affection, which must be directed towards my child when I am not alive to profit by it. No:—though I would give worlds to embrace you once more, for the sake of my child I resign the gratification.

'Oh, mother! you little think that I saw you, only a few days ago, from the stile by the cottage which overlooks your house: you were walking with a lady, and my child was with me (my Editha, for I have called her after you.) You seemed, methought, even cheerful, and I was so selfish that I felt shocked to think I was so entirely forgotten by you; for I was sure that if you thought of me you could not be cheerful. But your companion left you; and then you looked so very sad, that I was wretched from the idea that you were then thinking too much of me, and I wished you to resume your cheerfulness again.

'I was not cheerful, and Editha by her artless prattle wounded me to the very soul.—She wished, she said, to live
