rship; but
when I was abroad, I had the best teachers, and I worked hard, because my
progress pleased him. He is kind, Jeanie, only he has much to distress
him, especially when he looks backward. When I look backward myself, I
have always a ray of comfort: it is in the generous conduct of a sister,
who forsook me not when I was forsaken by every one. You have had your
reward. You live happy in the esteem and love of all who know you, and I
drag on the life of a miserable impostor, indebted for the marks of
regard I receive to a tissue of deceit and lies, which the slightest
accident may unravel. He has produced me to his friends, since the estate
opened to him, as a daughter of a Scotchman of rank, banished on account
of the Viscount of Dundee's wars--that is, our Fr's old friend Clavers,
you know--and he says I was educated in a Scotch convent; indeed, I lived
in such a place long enough to enable me to support the character. But
when a countryman approaches me, and begins to talk, as they all do, of
the various families engaged in Dundee's affair, and to make inquiries
into my connections, and when I see his eye bent on mine with such an
expression of agony, my terror brings me to the very risk of detection.
Good-nature and politeness have hitherto saved me, as they prevented
people from pressing on me with distressing questions. But how long--O
how long, will this be the case!--And if I bring this disgrace on him, he
will hate me--he will kill me, for as much as he loves me; he is as
jealous of his family honour now, as ever he was careless about it. I
have been in England four months, and have often thought of writing to
you; and yet, such are the dangers that might arise from an intercepted
letter, that I have hitherto forborne. But now I am obliged to run the
risk. Last week I saw your great friend, the D. of A. He came to my box,
and sate by me; and something in the play put him in mind of
you--Gracious Heaven! he told over your whole London journey to all who
were in the box, but particularly to the wretched creature who was the
occasion of it all. If he had known--if he could have conceived, beside
whom he was sitting, and to whom the story was told!--I suffered with
courage, like an Indian at the stake, while they are rending his fibres
and boring his eyes, and while he smiles applause at each well-imagined
contrivance of his torturers. It was too much for me at last, Jeanie--I
fainted; and my agony was imputed