ll remind me also, that if I disappointed the hopes of my
guardians, I did not incur their displeasure; that the bishop, at his
death, bequeathed me his blessing, his manuscript sermons, and a curious
portfolio containing the heads of eminent divines of the church of
England; and that my uncle, Sir Paul Mannering, left me sole heir and
executor to his large fortune. Yet this availeth me nothing; I told you I
had that upon my mind which I should carry to my grave with me, a
perpetual aloes in the draught of existence. I will tell you the cause
more in detail than I had the heart to do while under your hospitable
roof. You will often hear it mentioned, and perhaps with different and
unfounded circumstances. I will therefore speak it out; and then let the
event itself, and the sentiments of melancholy with which it has
impressed me, never again be subject of discussion between us.

'Sophia, as you well know, followed me to India. She was as innocent as
gay; but, unfortunately for us both, as gay as innocent. My own manners
were partly formed by studies I had forsaken, and habits of seclusion not
quite consistent with my situation as commandant of a regiment in a
country where universal hospitality is offered and expected by every
settler claiming the rank of a gentleman. In a moment of peculiar
pressure (you know how hard we were sometimes run to obtain white faces
to countenance our line-of-battle), a young man named Brown joined our
regiment as a volunteer, and, finding the military duty more to his fancy
than commerce, in which he had been engaged, remained with us as a cadet.
Let me do my unhappy victim justice: he behaved with such gallantry on
every occasion that offered that the first vacant commission was
considered as his due. I was absent for some weeks upon a distant
expedition; when I returned I found this young fellow established quite
as the friend of the house, and habitual attendant of my wife and
daughter. It was an arrangement which displeased me in many particulars,
though no objection could be made to his manners or character. Yet I
might have been reconciled to his familiarity in my family, but for the
suggestions of another. If you read over--what I never dare open--the
play of "Othello," you will have some idea of what followed--I mean of my
motives; my actions, thank God! were less reprehensible. There was
another cadet ambitious of the vacant situation. He called my attention
to what he led me to te