eel from this
information? she grew worse, I never left her one moment.

"The next morning she called me to her; she took my hand, and
looking at me with a tenderness no language can describe,

"'My dear, my only friend,' said she, 'I am dying; you are come to
receive the last breath of your unhappy Sophia: I wish with ardor for
my father's blessing and forgiveness, but dare not ask them.

"'The weakness of my heart has undone me; I am lost, abandoned by him
on whom my soul doated; by him, for whom I would have sacrificed a
thousand lives; he has left me with my babe to perish, yet I still love
him with unabated fondness: the pang of losing him sinks me to the
grave!'

"Her speech here failed her for a time; but recovering, she
proceeded,

"'Hard as this request may seem, and to whatever miseries it may
expose my angel friend, I adjure you not to desert my child; save him
from the wretchedness that threatens him; let him find in you a mother
not less tender, but more virtuous, than his own.

"'I know, my Fanny, I undo you by this cruel confidence; but who else
will have mercy on this innocent?'

"Unable to answer, my heart torn with unutterable anguish, I
snatched the lovely babe to my bosom, I kissed him, I bathed him with
my tears.

"She understood me, a gleam of pleasure brightened her dying eyes,
the child was still pressed to my heart, she gazed on us both with a
look of wild affection; then, clasping her hands together, and
breathing a fervent prayer to heaven, sunk down, and expired without a
groan--

"To you, Madam, I need not say the rest.

"The eloquence of angels could not paint my distress; I saw the
friend of my soul, the best and most gentle of her sex, a breathless
corse before me; her heart broke by the ingratitude of the man she
loved, her honor the sport of fools, her guiltless child a sharer in
her shame.

"And all this ruin brought on by a sensibility of which the best
minds alone are susceptible, by that noble integrity of soul which made
it impossible for her to suspect another.

"Distracted with grief, I kissed my Sophia's pale lips, talked to
her lifeless form; I promised to protect the sweet babe, who smiled on
me, and with his little hand pressed mine, as if sensible of what I
said.

"As soon as my grief was enough calmed to render me capable of any
thing, I wrote an account of Sophia's death to her father, who had the
inhumanity to refuse to see her child.

"I disdained an