“’The weakness of my heart has undone me; I am lost, abandoned by him on whom my soul doated; by him, for whom I would have sacrificed a thousand lives; he has left me with my babe to perish, yet I still love him with unabated fondness:  the pang of losing him sinks me to the grave!’

“Her speech here failed her for a time; but recovering, she proceeded,

“’Hard as this request may seem, and to whatever miseries it may expose my angel friend, I adjure you not to desert my child; save him from the wretchedness that threatens him; let him find in you a mother not less tender, but more virtuous, than his own.

“’I know, my Fanny, I undo you by this cruel confidence; but who else will have mercy on this innocent?’

“Unable to answer, my heart torn with unutterable anguish, I snatched the lovely babe to my bosom, I kissed him, I bathed him with my tears.

“She understood me, a gleam of pleasure brightened her dying eyes, the child was still pressed to my heart, she gazed on us both with a look of wild affection; then, clasping her hands together, and breathing a fervent prayer to heaven, sunk down, and expired without a groan—­

“To you, Madam, I need not say the rest.

“The eloquence of angels could not paint my distress; I saw the friend of my soul, the best and most gentle of her sex, a breathless corse before me; her heart broke by the ingratitude of the man she loved, her honor the sport of fools, her guiltless child a sharer in her shame.

“And all this ruin brought on by a sensibility of which the best minds alone are susceptible, by that noble integrity of soul which made it impossible for her to suspect another.

“Distracted with grief, I kissed my Sophia’s pale lips, talked to her lifeless form; I promised to protect the sweet babe, who smiled on me, and with his little hand pressed mine, as if sensible of what I said.

“As soon as my grief was enough calmed to render me capable of any thing, I wrote an account of Sophia’s death to her father, who had the inhumanity to refuse to see her child.

“I disdained an application to her murderer; and retiring to this place, where I was, and resolved to continue, unknown, determined to devote my life to the sweet infant, and to support him by an industry which I did not doubt heaven would prosper.

“The faithful girl who had attended Sophia, begged to continue with me; we work for the milleners in the neighbouring towns, and, with the little pittance I have, keep above want.

“I know the consequence of what I have undertaken; I know I give up the world and all hopes of happiness to myself:  yet will I not desert this friendless little innocent, nor betray the confidence of my expiring friend, whose last moments were soothed with the hope of his finding a parent’s care in me.

“You have had the goodness to wish to serve me.  Sir Charles Verville is dead:  a fever, the consequence of his ungoverned intemperance, carried him off suddenly:  his brother Sir William has a worthy character; if Colonel Rivers, by his general acquaintance with the great world, can represent this story to him, it possibly may procure my little Charles happier prospects than my poverty can give him.