ptation was it
that could thus obliterate your virtue?"

"He offered me marriage," replied she. "We were indeed married secretly
by a popish priest, whose name I was sworn to conceal."

"What!" interrupted I. "And were you indeed married?"

"Alas!" she said, "he has been married already by the same priest to six
or eight wives more, whom, like me, he has deceived and abandoned."

"Have patience, my child," cried I, "and I hope things will yet be
better. To-morrow I'll carry you home to your mother. Poor woman, this
has gone to her heart; but she loves you still, Olivia, and will forget
it."

_IV.--Fresh Calamities_

It was late the next night when I approached my own home. I had left
Olivia at an inn five miles away, intending to prepare my family for her
reception. To my amazement, I saw the house bursting out into a blaze of
fire, and every aperture red with conflagration! I gave a loud
convulsive outcry, which alarmed my son, and all my family ran out, wild
with apprehension. Our neighbours came running to our assistance; but
the flames had taken too strong a hold to be extinguished, and all the
neighbours could do was to stand spectators of the calamity. They
brought us clothes and furnished one of our outhouses with kitchen
utensils; so that by daylight we had another, though a wretched,
dwelling to retire to.

In the midst of this affliction our poor lost one returned to us. "Ah,
madam," cried her mother, "this is but a poor place to come to after so
much finery! I can afford but little entertainment to persons who have
kept company only with persons of distinction; but I hope Heaven will
forgive you."

The unhappy victim stood pale and trembling, unable to weep or to reply.

"I entreat, woman," I said to my wife, with severity in my voice and
manner, "that my words may be now marked once for all. I have here
brought you back a poor deluded wanderer--her return to duty demands the
revival of our tenderness. The real hardships of life are now coming
fast upon us; let us not increase them by dissensions among each other.
The kindness of Heaven is promised to the penitent, and let ours be
directed by the example."

My daughter's grief, however, seemed formed for continuing, and her
wretchedness was increased by the news that Mr. Thornhill was going to
be married to the rich Miss Wilmot, who had formerly been betrothed to
my eldest son.

On a morning of peculiar warmth for the season, when we were
b