to be paramount to all filial duty.

"I think, sir, if your mother heard you, and saw Miss Lambert, she would
relent," said the doctor. Who was my mother to hold me in bondage; to
claim a right of misery over me; and to take this angel out of my arms?

"He could not," he said, "be a message-carrier between young ladies who
were pining and young lovers on whom the sweethearts' gates were shut:
but so much he would venture to say, that he had seen me, and was
prescribing for me, too." Yes, he must have been unhappy once, himself.
I saw him, you may be sure, on the very day when he had kept his promise
to me. He said she seemed to be comforted by hearing news of me.

"She bears her suffering with an angelical sweetness. I prescribe
Jesuit's bark, which she takes; but I am not sure the hearing of you has
not done more good than the medicine." The women owned afterwards that
they had never told the General of the doctor's new patient.

I know not what wild expressions of gratitude I poured out to the good
doctor for the comfort he brought me. His treatment was curing two
unhappy sick persons. 'Twas but a drop of water, to be sure; but then
a drop of water to a man raging in torment. I loved the ground he trod
upon, blessed the hand that took mine, and had felt her pulse. I had a
ring with a pretty cameo head of a Hercules on it. 'Twas too small for
his finger, nor did the good old man wear such ornaments. I made
him hang it to his watch-chain, in hopes that she might see it, and
recognise that the token came from me. How I fastened upon Spencer
at this time (my friend of the Temple who also had an unfortunate
love-match), and walked with him from my apartments to the Temple, and
he back with me to Bedford Gardens, and our talk was for ever about our
women! I dare say I told everybody my grief. My good landlady and Betty
the housemaid pitied me. My son Miles, who, for a wonder, has been
reading in my MS., says, "By Jove, sir, I didn't know you and my mother
were took in this kind of way. The year I joined, I was hit very bad
myself. An infernal little jilt that threw me over for Sir Craven Oaks
of our regiment. I thought I should have gone crazy." And he gives a
melancholy whistle, and walks away.

The General had to leave London presently on one of his military
inspections, as the doctor casually told me; but, having given my
word that I would not seek to present myself at his house, I kept it,
availing myself, however,