always have spoken so sensibly, cousin.

'Cruel Laurana! You loved me once! I have no mother, as you have. My
mother was a good mother: but she is gone! Or I am gone, I know not
which!

'She threatened her then with the strait waistcoat, a punishment which
the unhappy lady was always greatly terrified at. Laura heard her beg
and pray; but, Laurana coming out, she was forced to retire.

'The poor young lady apprehending her cruel cousin's return with the
threatened waistcoat, and with the woman that used to be brought in when
they were disposed to terrify her, went down and hid herself under a
stair-case, where she was soon discovered by her clothes, which she had
not been careful to draw in after her.'

O, Lucy! how I wept! How insupportable to me, said Sir Charles, would
have been my reflections, had my conscience told me, that I had been the
wilful cause of the noble Clementina's calamity!

After I had a little recovered, I read to myself the next paragraph,
which related, 'that the cruel Laurana dragged the sweet sufferer by her
gown, from her hiding-place, inveighing against her, threatening her:
she, all patient, resigned, her hands crossed on her bosom, praying for
ercy, not by speech, but by her eyes, which, however, wept not: and
causing her to be carried up to her chamber, there punished her with the
strait waistcoat, as she had threatened.

'Father Marescotti was greatly affected with Laura's relation, as well as
with what he had himself observed: but on his return to Bologna, dreading
to acquaint her mother, for her own sake, with the treatment her
Clementina met with, he only said, he did not quite approve of it, and
advised her not to oppose the young lady's being brought home, if the
bishop and the general came into it: but he laid the whole matter before
the bishop, who wrote to the general to join with him out of hand, to
release their sister from her present bondage: and the general meeting
the bishop on a set day at Milan, for that purpose, the lady was
accordingly released.

'A breach ensued upon it, with Lady Sforza and her daughter; who would
have it, that Clementina was much better for their management. They had
by terror broke her spirit, and her passiveness was reckoned upon as an
indication of amendment.

'The marchioness being much indisposed, the young lady, attended by her
Camilla, was carried to Naples; where it is supposed she now is. Poor
young lady, how has she been hurried abou