- A Long Sickness Has Put Other Thoughts
Into My Head, And Inspired Me With A Tenderness
For Those Unhappy Babes, Which The Shame
Of Being Their Mother Hitherto Deprived Them
Of.
- I hear, with pleasure, that you are not
married, and are therefore at full liberty to
make some provision for them, if they are yet
living, that may alleviate the misfortune of
their birth.
Farewell; if I obtain this first and
last request, I shall dye well satisfied."
"P.S. Burn this paper, I conjure you, the moment
you have read it; but lay the contents
of it up in your heart never to be forgotten."
I now no longer wondered, pursued Dorilaus, at that impulse I had to
love you; - I found it the simpathy of nature, and adored the divine
power. - After having well fixed in my mind all the particulars of this
amazing secret, I performed her injunction, and committed it to the
flames: I had opportunity enough to inform her in what manner Horatio
had disposed of himself, and let her know you were gone with a lady on
her travels: I concealed indeed the motive, fearing to give her any
occasion of reproaching herself for having so long concealed what my
ignorance of might have involved us all in guilt and ruin.
I stayed some few days at the castle, and then took my leave: she said
many tender things at parting concerning you, and seemed well satisfied
with the assurances I gave her of making the same provision for you, as
I must have done had the ceremony of the church obliged me to it. This
seemed indeed the only thing for which she lived, and, I was informed,
died in a few days after.
At my return to England I renewed my endeavours to discover where you
were, but could hear nothing since you wrote from Aix-la-Chappelle, and
was equally troubled that I had received no letters from your
brother. - I doubted not but he had fallen in the battle, and mourned him
as lost; - till an old servant perceiving the melancholy I was in,
acquainted me that several letters had been left at my house by the post
during my absence, but that the kinsman I had left to take care of my
affairs had secreted them, jealous, no doubt, of the fondness I have
expressed for him. - This so enraged me, when on examination I had too
much reason to be assured of this treachery, that I turned my whole
estate into ready money, and resolved to quit England for ever, and pass
my life here, this being a country I always loved, and had many reasons
to dislike my own.
Here I soon heard news of my Horatio, and such as filled me with a
pleasure, which wanted nothing of being complete but the presence of my
dear Louisa to partake of it.
Dorilaus then went on, and acquainted her with the particulars of
Horatio's story, as he had learned it from the baron de Palfoy, with
whom he now was very intimate; but as the reader is sufficiently
informed of those transactions, it would be needless to repeat them; so
I shall only say that Dorilaus arrived in France in a short time after
Horatio had left it to enter into the service of the king of Sweden, and
had wrote that letter, inserted in the eighteenth chapter, in order to
engage that young warrior to return, some little time before his meeting
with Louisa.
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