ruelty of his other daughters had so violently shaken.
Let us return to say a word or two about those cruel daughters.

These monsters of ingratitude, who had been so false to their old
father, could not be expected to prove more faithful to their own
husbands. They soon grew tired of paying even the appearance of duty and
affection, and in an open way showed they had fixed their loves upon
another. It happened that the object of their guilty loves was the same.
It was Edmund, a natural son of the late Earl of Gloucester, who by his
treacheries had succeeded in disinheriting his brother Edgar, the lawful
heir, from his earldom, and by his wicked practices was now earl
himself; a wicked man, and a fit object for the love of such wicked
creatures as Goneril and Regan. It falling out about this time that the
Duke of Cornwall, Regan's husband, died, Regan immediately declared her
intention of wedding this Earl of Gloucester, which rousing the jealousy
of her sister, to whom as well as to Regan this wicked earl had at
sundry times professed love, Goneril found means to make away with her
sister by poison; but being detected in her practices, and imprisoned by
her husband, the Duke of Albany, for this deed, and for her guilty
passion for the earl which had come to his ears, she, in a fit of
disappointed love and rage, shortly put an end to her own life. Thus the
justice of Heaven at last overtook these wicked daughters.

While the eyes of all men were upon this event, admiring the justice
displayed in their deserved deaths, the same eyes were suddenly taken
off from this sight to admire at the mysterious ways of the same power
in the melancholy fate of the young and virtuous daughter, the Lady
Cordelia, whose good deeds did seem to deserve a more fortunate
conclusion: but it is an awful truth, that innocence and piety are not
always successful in this world. The forces which Goneril and Regan had
sent out under the command of the bad Earl of Gloucester were
victorious, and Cordelia, by the practices of this wicked earl, who did
not like that any should stand between him and the throne, ended her
life in prison. Thus, Heaven took this innocent lady to itself in her
young years, after showing her to the world an illustrious example of
filial duty. Lear did not long survive this kind child.

Before he died, the good Earl of Kent, who had still attended his old
master's steps from the first of his daughters' ill usage to this sa