apartment,
he supported her almost lifeless to it, while his aunts followed, all
three prescribing different remedies in a breath.

"For heaven's sake, take them from me!" faintly articulated Lady
Juliana, as she shrank from the many hands that were alternately applied
to her pulse and forehead.

After repeated entreaties and plausible excuses from Douglas, his aunts
at length consented to withdraw, and he then exerted all the rhetoric he
was master of to reconcile his bride to the situation love and necessity
had thrown her into. But in vain he employed reasoning, caresses, and
threats; the only answers he could extort were tears and entreaties to
be taken from a place where she declared she felt it impossible to
exist.

"If you wish my death, Harry," said she, in a voice almost inarticulate
from excess of weeping, "oh! kill me quickly, and do not leave me to
linger out my days, and perish at last with misery here."

"For heaven's sake, tell me what you would have me do," said her
husband, softened to pity by her extreme distress, "and I swear that in
everything possible I will comply with your wishes."

"Oh, fly then, stop the horses, and let us return immediately. Do run,
dearest Harry, or they will be gone; and we shall never get away from
this odious place."

"Where would you go?" asked he, with affected calmness.

"Oh, anywhere; no matter where, so as we do but get away from hence: we
can be at no loss."

"None in the world," interrupted Douglas, with a bitter smile, "as long
as there is a prison to receive us. See," continued he, throwing a few
shillings down on the table, "there is every sixpence I possess in the
world, so help me heaven!"

Lady Juliana stood aghast.

At that instant the English Abigail burst into the room, and in a voice
choking with passion, she requested her discharge, that she might return
with the driver who had brought them there.

"A pretty way of travelling, to be sure, it will be," continued she, "to
go bumping behind a dirty chaise-driver; but better to be shook to a
jelly altogether than stay amongst such a set of _Oaten-toads."_ [1]

[1] Hottentots.

"What do you mean?" inquired Douglas, as soon as the voluble Abigail
allowed him an opportunity of asking.

"Why, my meaning, sir, is to leave this here place immediately; not that
I have any objections either to my Lady or you, sir; but, to be sure, it
was a sad day for me that I engaged myself to her Ladyship. Little