had indeed preyed upon her
reason as well as her health; and, in her brief intervals of respite
from the rage of the uncle, the insults of the aunt, and, worse than
all, the addresses of the intended bridegroom, her mind, shocked and
unhinged, reverted with such intensity to the sufferings she endured as
to give her musings the character of insanity. It was in one of these
moments that she had written to Mordaunt; and had the contest continued
much longer the reason of the unfortunate and persecuted girl would have
totally deserted her.

She was a person of acute, and even poignant, sensibilities, and these
the imperfect nature of her education had but little served to guide
or to correct; but as her habits were pure and good, the impulses which
spring from habit were also sinless and exalted, and, if they erred,
"they leaned on virtue's side," and partook rather of a romantic
and excessive generosity than of the weakness of womanhood or the
selfishness of passion. All the misery and debasement of her equivocal
and dependent situation had not been able to drive her into compliance
with Mordaunt's passionate and urgent prayers; and her heart was proof
even to the eloquence of love, when that eloquence pointed towards the
worldly injury and depreciation of her lover: but this new persecution
was utterly unforeseen in its nature and intolerable from its cause. To
marry another; to be torn forever from one in whom her whole heart was
wrapped; to be forced not only to forego his love, but to feel that the
very thought of him was a crime,--all this, backed by the vehement and
galling insults of her relations, and the sullen and unmoved meanness of
her intended bridegroom, who answered her candour and confession with a
stubborn indifference and renewed overtures, made a load of evil which
could neither be borne with resignation nor contemplated with patience.

She was sitting, after she had sent her letter, with her two relations,
for they seldom trusted her out of their sight, when Mr. Glumford was
announced. Now, Mr. George Glumford was a country gentleman of what
might be termed a third-rate family in the county: he possessed about
twelve hundred a year, to say nothing of the odd pounds, shillings, and
pence, which, however, did not meet with such contempt in his memory or
estimation; was of a race which could date as far back as Charles the
Second; had been educated at a country school with sixty others, chiefly
inferior