
she had purposed to be with her, and as she still continued earnestly to
enquire for news of Miss Mowbray, Mr. Stafford insisted on informing her
she was arrived; and this intelligence seemed to give her pleasure. She
desired Emmeline might come to her bed-side: but she was so weak, that
she could only in a faint voice express her pleasure at the sight of
her; and pressing her hand, begged she would not leave her.

It was impossible Emmeline could speak to her on the subject of
Delamere, as the least emotion might have been of the most fatal
consequence; and tho' she earnestly wished he might not have been
invited to stay, she was obliged to let it take it's course. She left
her friend's room no more that evening; and gave her whole thoughts and
attention to keeping her quiet and administering her medicines, which
Mrs. Stafford seemed pleased to receive from her hands.

Mr. Stafford was one of those unfortunate characters, who having neither
perseverance and regularity to fit them for business, or taste and
genius for more refined pursuits, seek, in every casual occurrence or
childish amusement, relief against the tedium of life. Tho' married very
early, and tho' father of a numerous family, he had thrown away the time
and money, which should have provided for them, in collecting baubles,
which he had repeatedly possessed and discarded, 'till having exhausted
every source that that species of idle folly offered, he had been
driven, by the same inability to pursue proper objects, into vices yet
more fatal to the repose of his wife, and schemes yet more destructive
to the fortune of his family. Married to a woman who was the delight of
her friends and the admiration of her acquaintance, surrounded by a
lovely and encreasing family, and possessed of every reasonable means of
happiness, he dissipated that property, which ought to have secured it's
continuance, in vague and absurd projects which he neither loved or
understood; and his temper growing more irritable in proportion as his
difficulties encreased, he sometimes treated his wife with great
harshness; and did not seem to think it necessary, even by apparent
kindness and attention, to excuse or soften to her his general ill
conduct, or his 'battening on the moor' of low and degrading debauchery.

Mrs. Stafford, who had been married to him at fifteen, had long been
unconscious of his weakness: and when time and her own excellent
understanding pressed the fatal conviction too forcibly upon her, she
still, but fruitlessly, attempted to hide from others what
