Emily resumed her book, when her father had ceased reading aloud; and I saw her wipe a tear from her cheek.

The excitement occasioned by this scene, added to my previous illness, from the effects of which I had not sufficiently recovered, caused a faintness; I sat down under the window, in hopes that it would pass off.  It did not, however; for I fell, and lay on the turf in a state of insensibility, which must have lasted nearly half an hour.  I afterwards learned from Clara, that Emily had opened the window, it being a French one, to walk out and recover herself.  By the bright moon-light, she perceived me lying on the ground.  Her first idea was, that I had committed suicide; and, with this impression, she shut the window, and tottering to the back part of the room, fainted.  Her father ran to her assistance, and she fell into his arms.  She was taken up to her room, and consigned to the care of her woman, who put her to bed; but she was unable to give any account of herself, or the cause of her disorder, until the following day.

For my own part, I gradually came to my senses, and with difficulty regained my chaise, the driver of which told me I had been gone about an hour.  I drove off to town, wholly unaware that I had been observed by any one, much less by Emily.  When she related to her father what she had seen, he either disbelieved or affected to disbelieve it, and treated it as the effects of a distempered mind, the phantoms of a disordered imagination; and she at length began to coincide with him.

I started for the continent a few days afterwards.  Talbot, who had seen little of Clara since my rejection by Emily, and subsequent illness, offered my father to accompany me; and Clara was anxious that he should go, as she was determined not to listen to any thing he could say during my affliction; she could not, she said, be happy while I was miserable, and gave him no opportunity of conversing with her on the subject of their union.

We arrived at Paris; but so abstracted was I in thought, that I neither saw nor heard any thing.  Every attention of Talbot was lost upon me.  I continued in my sullen stupor, and forgot to read the little book which dear Clara had given, and which, for her sake, I had promised to read.  I wrote to Eugenia on my arrival; and disburthened my mind in some measure, by acknowledging my shameful treatment of her.  I implored her pardon; and, by return of post, received it.  Her answer was affectionate and consoling; but she stated that her spirits, of course, were low, and her health but indifferent.