ng retain. Monthault assured her it would be
greatly for the benefit of her soul, if she would sign a deed
bequeathing to Allan Neville the inheritance of their ancestors; and
produced a prepared instrument, which Lady Bellingham was not in a state
to read, or indeed to listen to its recital. Relying on the veracity of
one whom she considered as a saint upon earth, and catching eagerly at
every thing which would allay those inward terrors that had been rather
benumbed than pacified, Lady Bellingham was induced to consent, and the
ministers were re-introduced to certify her being in a sound mind and to
witness the execution of a deed, which they trusted was to promote the
good cause, but which in reality bequeathed the Bellingham estate, after
the demise of Allan Neville, to Constantia Beaumont, provided she
consented to marry Monthault. Thus cheated and bewildered in her last
moments by those whom she believed to be endowed with super-human
perfections, this wretched woman terminated her miserable and guilty
life.

Monthault's next care was, to discover if his apparent reformation of
manners could so far impose on the simplicity and candour of the
Beaumonts as to make them strain the principle of Christian forgiveness,
and receive him as a friend. They were still in prison, but the
Protector had given orders, that they should be provided with handsome
apartments, and every comfort compatible with confinement at the public
expence. But though Monthault took on himself the merit of this lenient
treatment, the prejudices of the whole family against him formed an
insuperable bar to his designs. His change of conduct was too pointedly
obtrusive; his piety and penance too ostentatious to pass on a man who
was thoroughly conversant with the marks of genuine repentance. Dr.
Beaumont did not approve of an elaborate and unnecessary disclosure of
the secret enormities of his early life, which seemed to him more like
the wantonness of a depraved imagination wallowing in its former
abominations, than penitence shrinking, with horror, from its
recollected transgressions. But when Monthault proceeded to talk of his
present sinless rectitude, certainty of acceptance, rapturous exercises,
and experiences of future beatification, (the common cant of those
times,) the sound divine saw the once audacious sinner covering his
adhesive wickedness with the Pharisee's cloak, exchanging libertinism
for spiritual pride, and the excesses of debauc