Brereton's natural heir, however, at present disputes at law the portion of it that remains, alledging that from some private entail he was not empowered to dispose of it at pleasure; and it is thought the lady will be legally deprived of an inheritance which she so little deserves, and which she gained merely by the effects of her artful management, and the powerful influence she possessed over her superannuated husband.
After Mr. Brereton's death, his wife's conduct became so flagrant as to force those who had been hitherto willingly

blind to her infamy no longer to shut their eyes, and as a proper regard to the rules of propriety is a tax which virtue never more rigorously exacts from vice than where her genuine and intrinsic value is least admitted, she soon found her stay in France could not enable her to continue in that brilliant society where she had been accustomed to shine with such eclat. At this period, her acquaintance with Monsieur de Clarence commenced while he spent some time at the city of M— for the recovery of his health, whither his lady had not accompanied him.
He soon became enslaved by the charms of Mrs. Brereton, and weakly consented to her request of being invited to the residence of his lady at the Chateau de Clarence, on the footing of a friend recommended to his peculiar care by her deceased husband. Madame de Clarence was easily deceived; and without

difficulty consented to entreat the favour of a visit from his agreeable English acquaintance, who on her part regarding it as an ingenious stroke of policy to regain in some measure the good opinion of the world, to whom she might boast being still admitted into an intimacy so respectable, complied with eagerness and satisfaction. The company of the Chevalier de Mertane soon, however, interrupted the harmony which subsisted between Monsieur de Clarence and Mrs. Weldon, (for such was the name she now chose to assume, probably from an apprehension that the imprudence of Mrs. Brereton might not be wholly unknown even to Madame de Clarence, whilst under a borrowed name she might be easily imposed on.) The youth and weakness of the Chevalier almost instantly suggested to that abandoned woman the hopes of repairing her injured reputation and her exhausted finances, by an union,

the rank and opulence of which offered both to her vanity and profusion the most ample gratification.
This explanation fully accounts for the mortification and displeasure, too painful for concealment, which she so evidently discovered on perceiving the Chevalier's partiality for me. He was not however proof against her powers of fascination; and after my determined rejection, accepted with great cordiality