would be the event;
in the midst of my unlooked-for happiness, I scarcely recollected, or,
recollecting, was disposed to yield but a small degree of credit to, the menaces
of Mr. Falkland.
    One day, that I was sitting alone with the accomplished Laura, she repeated
his all-dreadful name. I started with astonishment, amazed that a woman like
this, who knew nobody, who lived as it were alone, in a corner of the universe,
who had never, in a single instance, entered into any fashionable circle, this
admirable and fascinating hermit, should by some unaccountable accident, have
become acquainted with this fatal and tremendous name. Astonishment however was
not my only sensation. I became pale with terror; I rose from my seat; I
attempted to sit down again; I reeled out of the room, and hastened to bury
myself in solitude. The unexpectedness of the incident, took from me all
precaution, and overwhelmed my faculties. The penetrating Laura observed my
behaviour; but nothing further occurring to excite her attention to it at that
time, and concluding from my manner that enquiry would be painful to me, she
humanely suppressed her curiosity.
    I afterwards found that Mr. Falkland had been known to the father of Laura;
that he had been acquainted with the story of count Malvesi, and with a number
of other transactions, redounding in the highest degree to the credit of the
gallant Englishman. The Neapolitan had left letters in which these transactions
were recorded, and which spoke of Mr. Falkland in the highest terms of
panegyric. Laura had been used to regard every little relic of her father with a
sort of religious veneration; and, by this accident, the name of Mr. Falkland
was connected in her mind, with the sentiments of unbounded esteem.
    The scene by which I was surrounded was perhaps more grateful to me, than it
would have been to most other persons with my degree of intellectual
cultivation. Sore with persecution and distress, and bleeding at almost every
vein, there was nothing I so much coveted as rest and tranquillity. It seemed as
if my faculties were, at least for the time, exhausted by the late preternatural
intensity of their exertions, and that they stood indispensibly in need of a
period of comparative suspension.
    This was however but a temporary feeling. My mind had always been active,
and I was probably indebted to the sufferings I had endured, and the exquisite
and increased susceptibility they produced, for new energies. I soon felt the
desire of some additional and vigorous pursuit. In this state of mind, I