Lord Alphingham had been a student in Dublin, in the environs of which city dwelt Mrs. Morley, a widow, and this her only child.  At their cottage he became a constant and devoted guest, and as might have been expected, his impetuous and headstrong nature became desperately enamoured of the beautiful and innocent Agnes, then only seventeen.  Spite of his youth, being barely twenty, neither mother nor daughter could withstand his eloquent solicitations, and a private but sacred marriage was performed.  He quitted college, but still lingered in Ireland, till a peremptory letter from his father summoned him to England, to celebrate his coming of age.  He left his bride, and the anguish of parting was certainly at that time mutual.  Some few months Agnes hoped for and looked to his return.  Alphingham, then Lord Amesfort, on his part, was restrained only by the fear of the inveteracy of his father’s disposition from confessing his marriage, and sending for his wife.  Another bride, of rank and wealth, was proposed to him, and then he confessed the truth.  The fury of the old man knew no bounds, and he swore to disinherit his son, if he did not promise never to return to his ignoble wife, whom he vowed he never would acknowledge.  Amesfort promised submission, fully intending to remain constant till his father’s death, which failing health proclaimed was not far distant, and then seek his gentle wife, and introduce her in her proper sphere.  He wrote to this effect, and the boding heart of Agnes sunk at once; in vain her mother strove to rouse her energies, by alluding to the strain of his letter, the passionate affection breathing in every line, the sacred nature of his promise.  She felt her doom, and ere her child was six months old, her feelings, ominous of evil, were fully verified.

Lord Alphingham lingered some time, and his son found in the society in which the Viscount took good care he should continually mingle, attractions weighty enough to banish from his fickle heart all love, and nearly all recollection of his wife.  He found matrimony would be very inconvenient in the gay circle of which he was a member.  All the better feelings and qualities of his youth fled; beneath the influence of example and bad companionship his evil ones were called forth and fostered, and speedily he became the heartless libertine we have seen him.  His letters to the unfortunate Agnes were less and less frequent, and at length ceased altogether, and the sum transmitted for her use every year was soon the only proof that he still lived.  His residence in foreign lands, the various names he assumed, baffled all her efforts at receiving the most distant intelligence concerning him, and Agnes still lingered in hopeless resignation—­“The heart will break, but brokenly live on;” and thus it was she lived, existing for her child alone.  Nine years they had been parted, and Agnes had ever shrunk in evident pain from quitting her native land, and the cottage