enamoured of the beautiful and innocent Agnes, then only seventeen.
Spite of his youth, being barely twenty, neither mother nor daughter
could withstand his eloquent solicitations, and a private but sacred
marriage was performed. He quitted college, but still lingered in
Ireland, till a peremptory letter from his father summoned him to
England, to celebrate his coming of age. He left his bride, and the
anguish of parting was certainly at that time mutual. Some few months
Agnes hoped for and looked to his return. Alphingham, then Lord
Amesfort, on his part, was restrained only by the fear of the inveteracy
of his father's disposition from confessing his marriage, and sending
for his wife. Another bride, of rank and wealth, was proposed to him,
and then he confessed the truth. The fury of the old man knew no bounds,
and he swore to disinherit his son, if he did not promise never to
return to his ignoble wife, whom he vowed he never would acknowledge.
Amesfort promised submission, fully intending to remain constant till
his father's death, which failing health proclaimed was not far distant,
and then seek his gentle wife, and introduce her in her proper sphere.
He wrote to this effect, and the boding heart of Agnes sunk at once; in
vain her mother strove to rouse her energies, by alluding to the strain
of his letter, the passionate affection breathing in every line, the
sacred nature of his promise. She felt her doom, and ere her child was
six months old, her feelings, ominous of evil, were fully verified.

Lord Alphingham lingered some time, and his son found in the society in
which the Viscount took good care he should continually mingle,
attractions weighty enough to banish from his fickle heart all love, and
nearly all recollection of his wife. He found matrimony would be very
inconvenient in the gay circle of which he was a member. All the better
feelings and qualities of his youth fled; beneath the influence of
example and bad companionship his evil ones were called forth and
fostered, and speedily he became the heartless libertine we have seen
him. His letters to the unfortunate Agnes were less and less frequent,
and at length ceased altogether, and the sum transmitted for her use
every year was soon the only proof that he still lived. His residence in
foreign lands, the various names he assumed, baffled all her efforts at
receiving the most distant intelligence concerning him, and Agnes still
lingered in hopeless re