He held it to me.

I took it. These, Lucy, are the contents.

'The bishop acquaints him with the very melancholy way they are in. The
father and mother declining in their healths. Signor Jeronymo worse than
when Sir Charles left them. His sister also declining in her health: yet
earnest still to see him.

'He says, that she is at present at Urbino; but is soon to go to Naples
to the general's. He urges him to make them one visit more; yet owns,
that his family are not unanimous in the request: but that he and Father
Marescotti, and the marchioness, are extremely earnest that this
indulgence should be granted to the wishes of his dear sister.

'He offers to meet him, at his own appointment, and conduct him to
Bologna; where, he tells him, his presence will rejoice every heart, and
procure an unanimous consent to the interview so much desired: and says,
that if this measure, which he is sorry he has so long withstood, answers
not his hopes, he will advise the shutting up of their Clementina in a
nunnery, or to consign her to private hands, where she shall be treated
kindly, but as persons in her unhappy circumstances are accustomed to be
treated.'

Sir Charles then shewed me a letter from Signor Jeronymo; in which he
acquaints him with the dangerous way he is in. He tells him, 'That his
life is a burden to him. He wishes it was brought to its period. He
does not think himself in skilful hands. He complains most of the wound
which is in his hip-joint; and which has hitherto baffled the art both of
the Italian and French surgeons who have been consulted. He wishes, that
himself and Sir Charles had been of one country, he says, since the
greatest felicity he now has to wish for, is to yield up his life to the
Giver of it, in the arms of his Grandison.'

He mentions not one word in this melancholy letter of his unhappy sister:
which Sir Charles accounted for, by supposing, that she not being at
Bologna, they kept from him, in his deplorable way, everything relating
to her, that was likely to disturb him. He then read part of a letter
written in English, by the admired Mrs. Beaumont; some of the contents
of which were, as you shall hear, extremely affecting.

'Mrs. Beaumont gives him in it an account of the situation of the unhappy
young lady; and excuses herself for not having done it before, in answer
to his request, by reason of an indisposition under which she had for
some time laboured, which had hindered her from