part with her--if the mother went, she would also go beg
bread for her, die with her, but never desert her. The presence of Lucy was
too necessary in keeping up the order of the house, and in preventing the
whole establishment from going to wreck, for him to permit her to leave
him. He yielded the point; but in all accesses of anger, or in his drunken
fits, he recurred to the old topic, and stung poor Lucy's heart by
opprobrious epithets bestowed on her parent.

A passion however, if it be wholly pure, entire, and reciprocal, brings
with it its own solace. Lucy was truly, and from the depth of heart,
devoted to her mother; the sole end she proposed to herself in life, was
the comfort and preservation of this parent. Though she grieved for the
result, yet she did not repent of her marriage, even when her lover
returned to bestow competence on her. Three years had intervened, and how,
in their pennyless state, could her mother have existed during this time?
This excellent woman was worthy of her child's devotion. A perfect
confidence and friendship existed between them; besides, she was by no
means illiterate; and Lucy, whose mind had been in some degree cultivated
by her former lover, now found in her the only person who could understand
and appreciate her. Thus, though suffering, she was by no means desolate,
and when, during fine summer days, she led her mother into the flowery and
shady lanes near their abode, a gleam of unmixed joy enlightened her
countenance; she saw that her parent was happy, and she knew that this
happiness was of her sole creating.

Meanwhile her husband's affairs grew more and more involved; ruin was near
at hand, and she was about to lose the fruit of all her labours, when
pestilence came to change the aspect of the world. Her husband reaped
benefit from the universal misery; but, as the disaster encreased, the
spirit of lawlessness seized him; he deserted his home to revel in the
luxuries promised him in London, and found there a grave. Her former lover
had been one of the first victims of the disease. But Lucy continued to
live for and in her mother. Her courage only failed when she dreaded peril
for her parent, or feared that death might prevent her from performing
those duties to which she was unalterably devoted.

When we had quitted Windsor for London, as the previous step to our final
emigration, we visited Lucy, and arranged with her the plan of her own and
her mother's removal. Lucy