her fall, to come briefly to the events that
followed.

There are, nevertheless, some articles under the former class, which
ought not to be entirely omitted.

Lord Elmwood, after four years enjoyment of the most perfect happiness
that marriage could give, after becoming the father of a beautiful
daughter, whom he loved with a tenderness almost equal to his love of
her mother, was under the indispensable necessity of leaving them both
for a time, in order to rescue from the depredation of his own steward,
his very large estates in the West Indies. His voyage was tedious; his
residence there, from various accidents, prolonged from time to time,
till near three years had at length passed away. Lady Elmwood, at first
only unhappy, became at last provoked; and giving way to that irritable
disposition which she had so seldom governed, resolved, in spite of his
injunctions, to divert the melancholy hours caused by his absence, by
mixing in the gay circles of London.

Lord Elmwood at this time, and for many months before, had been detained
abroad by a severe and dangerous illness, which a too cautious fear of
her uneasiness, had prompted him to conceal; and she received his
frequent apologies for not returning, with a suspicion and resentment
they were calculated, but not intended, to inspire.

To violent anger, succeeded a degree of indifference still more
fatal--Lady Elmwood's heart was not formed for such a state--there, where
all the tumultuous passions harboured by turns, one among them soon
found the means to occupy all vacancies: a passion, commencing
innocently, but terminating in guilt. The dear object of her fondest,
her truest affections, was away; and those affections, painted the time
so irksome that was past; so wearisome, that, which was still to come;
that she flew from the present tedious solitude, to the dangerous
society of one, whose whole mind depraved by fashionable vices, could
not repay her for a moment's loss of him, whose absence he supplied. Or,
if the delirium gave her a moment's recompence, what were her
sufferings, her remorse, when she was awakened from the fleeting joy, by
the arrival of her husband? How happy, how transporting would have been
that arrival a few months before! As it would then have been felicity
unbounded, it was now--language affords no word that can describe Lady
Elmwood's sensations, on being told her Lord was arrived, and that
necessity alone had so long delayed his retu