highway in order to be caught and hung as my Lord Ferrers:
or of joining the King of Prussia, and requesting some of his Majesty's
enemies to knock my brains out; or of enlisting for the India service,
and performing some desperate exploit which should end in my bodily
destruction. Ah me! that was indeed a dreadful time! Your mother scarce
dares speak of it now, save in a whisper of terror; or think of it--it
was such cruel pain. She was unhappy years after on the anniversary of
the day, until one of you was born on it. Suppose we had been parted:
what had come to us? What had my lot been without her? As I think of
that possibility, the whole world is a blank. I do not say were we
parted now. It has pleased God to give us thirty years of union. We have
reached the autumn season. Our successors are appointed and ready; and
that one of us who is first called away, knows the survivor will follow
ere long. But we were actually parted in our youth; and I tremble
to think what might have been, had not a dearest friend brought us
together.

Unknown to myself, and very likely meaning only my advantage, my
relatives in England had chosen to write to Madam Esmond in Virginia,
and represent what they were pleased to call the folly of the engagement
I had contracted. Every one of them sang the same song: and I saw the
letters, and burned the whole cursed pack of them years afterwards when
my mother showed them to me at home in Virginia. Aunt Bernstein was
forward with her advice. A young person, with no wonderful good looks,
of no family, with no money;--was ever such an imprudent connexion, and
ought it not for dear George's sake to be broken off? She had several
eligible matches in view for me. With my name and prospects, 'twas a
shame I should throw myself away on this young lady; her sister ought to
interpose--and so forth.

My Lady Warrington must write, too, and in her peculiar manner. Her
ladyship's letter was garnished with scripture texts.

She dressed her worldliness out in phylacteries. She pointed out how I
was living in an unworthy society of player-folks, and the like people,
who she could not say were absolutely without religion (Heaven forbid!),
but who were deplorably worldly. She would not say an artful woman had
inveigled me for her daughter, having in vain tried to captivate my
younger brother. She was far from saying any harm of the young woman I
had selected; but at least this was certain, Miss L. had no fo