My father’s affairs were, at that time, in a situation, which determined my uncle to take the first opportunity of marrying me to advantage.

I regarded him as a father; he had always been more than a parent to me; I had the most implicit deference to his will.

He engaged me to Sir George Clayton; and, when dying, told me the story of my birth, to which I had till then been a stranger, exacting from me, however, an oath of secresy till I saw my father.

He died, leaving me, with a trifle left in trust to him for my use from my grandfather, about two thousand pounds, which was all I, at that time, ever expected to possess.

My father was then thought ruined; there was even a report of his death, and I imagined myself absolute mistress of my own actions.

I was near two years without hearing any thing of him; nor did I know I had still a father, till the letters you brought me from Mrs. Melmoth.

A variety of accidents, and our being both abroad, and in such distant parts of the world, prevented his letters arriving.

In this situation, the kind hand of heaven conducted my Rivers to Montreal.

I saw him; and, from that moment, my whole soul was his.

Formed for each other, our love was sudden and resistless as the bolt of heaven:  the first glance of those dear speaking eyes gave me a new being, and awaked in me ideas never known before.

The strongest sympathy attached me to him in spite of myself:  I thought it friendship, but felt that friendship more lively than what I called my love for Sir George; all conversation but his became insupportable to me; every moment that he passed from me, I counted as lost in my existence.

I loved him; that tenderness hourly increased:  I hated Sir George, I fancied him changed; I studied to find errors in a man who had, a few weeks before, appeared to me amiable, and whom I had consented to marry; I broke with him, and felt a weight removed from my soul.

I trembled when Rivers appeared; I died to tell him my whole soul was his; I watched his looks, to find there the same sentiments with which he had inspired me:  that transporting moment at length arrived; I had the delight to find our tenderness was mutual, and to devote my life to making happy the lord of my desires.

Mrs. Melmoth’s letter brought me my father’s commands, if unmarried, to continue so till his return.

He added, that he intended me for a relation, to whose family he had obligations; that, his affairs having suffered such a happy revolution, he had it in his power, and, therefore, thought it his duty, to pay this debt of gratitude; and, at the same time, hoping to make me happy by connecting me with an amiable family, allied to him by blood and friendship; and uniting me to a man whom report spoke worthy of all my tenderness.

You may remember, my dearest Bell, how strongly I was affected on reading those letters:  I wrote to Rivers, to beg him to defer our marriage; but the manner in which he took that request, and the fear of appearing indifferent to him, conquered all sense of what I owed to my father, and I married him; making it, however, a condition that he should ask no explanation of my conduct till I chose to give it.