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how my best years had been devoted to advance them--to ennoble their cause in the lying page of History! All this was not thought of: my life was reduced to two epochs--that of use to them--that not. During the first, I was honoured; during the last, I was left to starve--to rot! Who freed me from prison?--who protects me now? One of my 'party'--my 'noble friends'--my 'honourable, right honourable friends'? No! a tradesman whom I once served in my holyday, and who alone, of all the world, forgets me not in my penance. You see gratitude, friendship, spring up only in middle life; they grow not in high stations! "And now, come nearer, for my voice falters, and I would have these words distinctly heard. Child, girl as you are--you I consider pledged to record, to fulfil my desire--my curse! Lay your hand on mine: swear that through life to death,--swear! You speak not! repeat my words after me:"--Constance obeyed:--"through life to death; through good, through ill, through weakness, through power, you will devote yourself to humble, to abase that party from whom your father received ingratitude, mortification, and death! Swear that you will not marry a poor and powerless man, who cannot minister to the ends of that solemn retribution I invoke! Swear that you will seek to marry from amongst the great; not through love, not through ambition, but through hate, and for revenge! You will seek to rise that you may humble those who have betrayed me! In the social walks of life you will delight to gall their vanities in state intrigues, you will embrace every measure that can bring them to their eternal downfall. For this great end you will pursue all means. What! you hesitate? Repeat, repeat, repeat!--You will lie, cringe, fawn, and think vice not vice, if it bring you one jot nearer to Revenge! With this curse on my foes, I entwine my blessing, dear, dear Constance, on you,--you, who have nursed, watched, all but saved me! God, God bless you, my child!" And Vernon burst into tears. It was two hours after this singular scene, and exactly in the third hour of morning, that Vernon woke from a short and troubled sleep. The grey dawn (for the time was the height of summer) already began to labour through the shades and against the stars of night. A raw and comfortless chill crept over the earth, and saddened the air in the death-chamber. Constance sat by her father's bed, her eyes fixed upon him, and her cheek more wan than ever by
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