ruelly damped
by melancholy reflections on my widowed state--widowed by the death of my
uncle. Of Mr. Venables I thought not, even when I thought of the felicity
of loving your father, and how a mother's pleasure might be exalted, and
her care softened by a husband's tenderness.--'Ought to be!' I exclaimed;
and I endeavoured to drive away the tenderness that suffocated me; but
my spirits were weak, and the unbidden tears would flow. 'Why was I,' I
would ask thee, but thou didst not heed me,--'cut off from the
participation of the sweetest pleasure of life?' I imagined with what
extacy, after the pains of child-bed, I should have presented my little
stranger, whom I had so long wished to view, to a respectable father, and
with what maternal fondness I should have pressed them both to my
heart!--Now I kissed her with less delight, though with the most
endearing compassion, poor helpless one! when I perceived a slight
resemblance of him, to whom she owed her existence; or, if any gesture
reminded me of him, even in his best days, my heart heaved, and I pressed
the innocent to my bosom, as if to purify it--yes, I blushed to think
that its purity had been sullied, by allowing such a man to be its
father.

"After my recovery, I began to think of taking a house in the country, or
of making an excursion on the continent, to avoid Mr. Venables; and to
open my heart to new pleasures and affection. The spring was melting into
summer, and you, my little companion, began to smile--that smile made
hope bud out afresh, assuring me the world was not a desert. Your
gestures were ever present to my fancy; and I dwelt on the joy I should
feel when you would begin to walk and lisp. Watching your wakening mind,
and shielding from every rude blast my tender blossom, I recovered my
spirits--I dreamed not of the frost--'the killing frost,' to which you
were destined to be exposed.--But I lose all patience--and execrate the
injustice of the world--folly! ignorance!--I should rather call it; but,
shut up from a free circulation of thought, and always pondering on the
same griefs, I writhe under the torturing apprehensions, which ought to
excite only honest indignation, or active compassion; and would, could I
view them as the natural consequence of things. But, born a woman--and
born to suffer, in endeavouring to repress my own emotions, I feel more
acutely the various ills my sex are fated to bear--I feel that the evils
they are subject to endu