om it was said the Marchioness was
attached, when she was compelled to marry the Marquis de Villeroi; but
that he had afterwards cherished a passion for her, she could not suffer
herself to believe, for a moment. The papers, which he had so solemnly
enjoined her to destroy, she now fancied had related to this connection,
and she wished more earnestly than before to know the reasons, that
made him consider the injunction necessary, which, had her faith in
his principles been less, would have led to believe, that there was
a mystery in her birth dishonourable to her parents, which those
manuscripts might have revealed.

Reflections, similar to these, engaged her mind, during the greater part
of the night, and when, at length, she fell into a slumber, it was only
to behold a vision of the dying nun, and to awaken in horrors, like
those she had witnessed.

On the following morning, she was too much indisposed to attend her
appointment with the abbess, and, before the day concluded, she heard,
that sister Agnes was no more. Mons. Bonnac received this intelligence,
with concern; but Emily observed, that he did not appear so much
affected now, as on the preceding evening, immediately after quitting
the apartment of the nun, whose death was probably less terrible to him,
than the confession he had been then called upon to witness. However
this might be, he was perhaps consoled, in some degree, by a knowledge
of the legacy bequeathed him, since his family was large, and the
extravagance of some part of it had lately been the means of involving
him in great distress, and even in the horrors of a prison; and it was
the grief he had suffered from the wild career of a favourite son, with
the pecuniary anxieties and misfortunes consequent upon it, that
had given to his countenance the air of dejection, which had so much
interested Emily.

To his friend Mons. Du Pont he recited some particulars of his late
sufferings, when it appeared, that he had been confined for several
months in one of the prisons of Paris, with little hope of release,
and without the comfort of seeing his wife, who had been absent in the
country, endeavouring, though in vain, to procure assistance from his
friends. When, at length, she had obtained an order for admittance, she
was so much shocked at the change, which long confinement and sorrow had
made in his appearance, that she was seized with fits, which, by their
long continuance, threatened her life.