sitting on the steps of the door. She attempted to rise as they
approached, but from extreme weakness was unable, and after several
fruitless efforts fell back in a fit. Mr. Temple was not one of those
men who stand to consider whether by assisting an object in distress
they shall not inconvenience themselves, but instigated by the impulse
of a noble feeling heart, immediately ordered her to be carried into the
house, and proper restoratives applied.

She soon recovered; and fixing her eyes on Mrs. Temple, cried--"You know
not, Madam, what you do; you know not whom you are relieving, or you
would curse me in the bitterness of your heart. Come not near me, Madam,
I shall contaminate you. I am the viper that stung your peace. I am the
woman who turned the poor Charlotte out to perish in the street. Heaven
have mercy! I see her now," continued she looking at Lucy; "such, such
was the fair bud of innocence that my vile arts blasted ere it was half
blown."

It was in vain that Mr. and Mrs. Temple intreated her to be composed and
to take some refreshment. She only drank half a glass of wine; and then
told them that she had been separated from her husband seven years,
the chief of which she had passed in riot, dissipation, and vice, till,
overtaken by poverty and sickness, she had been reduced to part with
every valuable, and thought only of ending her life in a prison; when a
benevolent friend paid her debts and released her; but that her illness
increasing, she had no possible means of supporting herself, and her
friends were weary of relieving her. "I have fasted," said she, "two
days, and last night lay my aching head on the cold pavement: indeed it
was but just that I should experience those miseries myself which I had
unfeelingly inflicted on others."

Greatly as Mr. Temple had reason to detest Mrs. Crayton, he could not
behold her in this distress without some emotions of pity. He gave her
shelter that night beneath his hospitable roof, and the next day got her
admission into an hospital; where having lingered a few weeks, she died,
a striking example that vice, however prosperous in the beginning, in
the end leads only to misery and shame.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Charlotte Temple, by Susanna Rowson

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