Appeals to their feelings as they rode through the field had been frequent, and their progress was much retarded by attempts to contribute to the ease of a wounded or a dying man; but as the courier constantly urged speed, as the only means of securing the object of their ride, these halts were reluctantly abandoned.

It was ten o’clock before they reached the farm-house, where, in the midst of hundreds of his countrymen, lay the former lover of Jane.

As the subject of his confession must be anticipated by the reader, we will give a short relation of his life, and of those acts which more materially affect our history.

Henry Egerton had been turned early on the world, hundreds of his countrymen, without any principle to counteract the arts of infidelity, or resist the temptations of life.  His father held a situation under government, and was devoted to his rise in the diplomatic line.  His mother was a woman of fashion, who lived for effect and idle competition with her sisters in weakness and folly.  All he learnt in his father’s house was selfishness, from the example of one, and a love of high life and its extravagance from the other.

He entered the army young, and from choice.  The splendor and reputation of the service caught his fancy; and, by pride and constitution, he was indifferent to personal danger.  Yet he loved London and its amusements better than glory; and the money of his uncle, Sir Edgar, whose heir he was reputed to be, raised him to the rank of lieutenant colonel, without his spending an hour in the field.

Egerton had some abilities, and a good deal of ardor of temperament, by nature.  The former, from indulgence and example, degenerated into acquiring the art to please in mixed society; and the latter, from want of employment, expended itself at the card table.

The association between the vices is intimate.  There really appears to be a kind of modesty in sin that makes it ashamed of good company.  If we are unable to reconcile a favorite propensity to our principles, we are apt to abandon the unpleasant restraint on our actions, rather than admit the incongruous mixture.  Freed entirely from the fetters of our morals, what is there that our vices will not prompt us to commit?  Egerton, like thousands of others, went on from step to step, until he found himself in the world; free to follow all his inclinations, so he violated none of the decencies of life.

When in Spain, in his only campaign, he was accidentally, as has been mentioned, thrown in the way of the Donna Julia, and brought her off the ground under the influence of natural sympathy and national feeling; a kind of merit that makes vice only more dangerous, by making it sometimes amiable.  He had not seen his dependant long before her beauty, situation, and his passions decided, him to effect her ruin.

This was an occupation that his figure, manners, and propensities had made him an adept in, and nothing was further from his thoughts than the commission of any other than the crime that, according to his code, a gentleman, might be guilty of with impunity.