. Aubert had so
solemnly enjoined his daughter to destroy: and anxiety for her peace had
probably made him forbid her to enquire into the melancholy story,
to which they alluded. Such, indeed, had been his affliction, on the
premature death of this his favourite sister, whose unhappy marriage had
from the first excited his tenderest pity, that he never could hear
her named, or mention her himself after her death, except to Madame St.
Aubert. From Emily, whose sensibility he feared to awaken, he had so
carefully concealed her history and name, that she was ignorant, till
now, that she ever had such a relative as the Marchioness de Villeroi;
and from this motive he had enjoined silence to his only surviving
sister, Madame Cheron, who had scrupulously observed his request.

It was over some of the last pathetic letters of the Marchioness, that
St. Aubert was weeping, when he was observed by Emily, on the eve of
her departure from La Vallee, and it was her picture, which he had so
tenderly caressed. Her disastrous death may account for the emotion he
had betrayed, on hearing her named by La Voisin, and for his request to
be interred near the monument of the Villerois, where her remains were
deposited, but not those of her husband, who was buried, where he died,
in the north of France.

The confessor, who attended St. Aubert in his last moments, recollected
him to be the brother of the late Marchioness, when St. Aubert, from
tenderness to Emily, had conjured him to conceal the circumstance, and
to request that the abbess, to whose care he particularly recommended
her, would do the same; a request, which had been exactly observed.

Laurentini, on her arrival in France, had carefully concealed her
name and family, and, the better to disguise her real history, had,
on entering the convent, caused the story to be circulated, which had
imposed on sister Frances, and it is probable, that the abbess, who did
not preside in the convent, at the time of her noviciation, was also
entirely ignorant of the truth. The deep remorse, that seized on
the mind of Laurentini, together with the sufferings of disappointed
passion, for she still loved the Marquis, again unsettled her
intellects, and, after the first paroxysms of despair were passed, a
heavy and silent melancholy had settled upon her spirits, which suffered
few interruptions from fits of phrensy, till the time of her death.
During many years, it had been her only amusement to wal