n thy child's deserted years
Amid life's early woes are thrown,
Shall menial bosoms soothe the tears
That should be shed on thine alone?

7.
When on thy name his lips shall call,
(That tender name, the earliest taught!)
Thou wouldst not Shame and Sin were all
The memories link'd around its thought!

8.
If Sickness haunt his infant bed,
Ah! what could then replace thy care?
Could hireling steps as gently tread
As if a Mother's soul was there?

9.
Enough! 'tis not too late to shun
The bitter draught thyself wouldst fill;
The latest link is not undone
Thy bark is in the haven still.

10.
If doom'd to grief through life thou art,
'Tis thine at least unstain'd to die!
Oh! better break at once thy heart
Than rend it from its holiest tie!

It were vain to attempt describing Emily's feelings when the song
ceased. The scene floated before her eyes indistinct and dark. The
violence of the emotions she attempted to conceal pressed upon her
almost to choking. She rose, looked at Falkland with one look of such
anguish and despair that it froze his very heart, and left the room
without uttering a word. A moment more--they heard a noise--a fall. They
rushed out--Emily was stretched on the ground, apparently lifeless. She
had broken a blood-vessel.

BOOK IV.

FROM MRS. ST. JOHN TO ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ.

At last I can give a more favourable answer to your letters. Emily is
now quite out of danger. Since the day you forced yourself, with such a
disinterested regard for her health and reputation, into her room, she
grew (no thanks to your forbearance) gradually better. I trust that she
will be able to see you in a few days. I hope this the more, because she
now feels and decides that it will be for the last time. You have, it
is true, injured her happiness for life her virtue, thank Heaven, is yet
spared; and though you have made her wretched, you will never, I trust,
succeed in making her despised.

You ask me, with some menacing and more complaint, why I am so bitter
against you. I will tell you. I not only know Emily, and feel confident,
from that knowledge, that nothing can recompense her for the reproaches
of conscience, but I know you, and am convinced that you are the last
man to render her happy. I set aside, for the mom