“After my recovery, I began to think of taking a house in the country, or of making an excursion on the continent, to avoid Mr. Venables; and to open my heart to new pleasures and affection.  The spring was melting into summer, and you, my little companion, began to smile—­that smile made hope bud out afresh, assuring me the world was not a desert.  Your gestures were ever present to my fancy; and I dwelt on the joy I should feel when you would begin to walk and lisp.  Watching your wakening mind, and shielding from every rude blast my tender blossom, I recovered my spirits—­I dreamed not of the frost—­’the killing frost,’ to which you were destined to be exposed.—­But I lose all patience—­and execrate the injustice of the world—­folly! ignorance!—­I should rather call it; but, shut up from a free circulation of thought, and always pondering on the same griefs, I writhe under the torturing apprehensions, which ought to excite only honest indignation, or active compassion; and would, could I view them as the natural consequence of things.  But, born a woman—­and born to suffer, in endeavouring to repress my own emotions, I feel more acutely the various ills my sex are fated to bear—­I feel that the evils they are subject to endure, degrade them so far below their oppressors, as almost to justify their tyranny; leading at the same time superficial reasoners to term that weakness the cause, which is only the consequence of short-sighted despotism.”

CHAPTER 14

“AS MY MIND grew calmer, the visions of Italy again returned with their former glow of colouring; and I resolved on quitting the kingdom for a time, in search of the cheerfulness, that naturally results from a change of scene, unless we carry the barbed arrow with us, and only see what we feel.

“During the period necessary to prepare for a long absence, I sent a supply to pay my father’s debts, and settled my brothers in eligible situations; but my attention was not wholly engrossed by my family, though I do not think it necessary to enumerate the common exertions of humanity.  The manner in which my uncle’s property was settled, prevented me from making the addition to the fortune of my surviving sister, that I could have wished; but I had prevailed on him to bequeath her two thousand pounds, and she determined to marry a lover, to whom she had been some time attached.  Had it not been for this engagement, I should have invited her to accompany me in my tour; and I might have escaped the pit, so artfully dug in my path, when I was the least aware of danger.