what, in other circumstances, would
have been common-place subjects, that Jemima felt, with surprise, a tear
of pleasure trickling down her rugged cheeks. She wiped it away, half
ashamed; and when Maria kindly enquired the cause, with all the eager
solicitude of a happy being wishing to impart to all nature its
overflowing felicity, Jemima owned that it was the first tear that social
enjoyment had ever drawn from her. She seemed indeed to breathe more
freely; the cloud of suspicion cleared away from her brow; she felt
herself, for once in her life, treated like a fellow-creature.

Imagination! who can paint thy power; or reflect the evanescent tints of
hope fostered by thee? A despondent gloom had long obscured Maria's
horizon--now the sun broke forth, the rainbow appeared, and every
prospect was fair. Horror still reigned in the darkened cells, suspicion
lurked in the passages, and whispered along the walls. The yells of men
possessed, sometimes made them pause, and wonder that they felt so happy,
in a tomb of living death. They even chid themselves for such apparent
insensibility; still the world contained not three happier beings. And
Jemima, after again patrolling the passage, was so softened by the air of
confidence which breathed around her, that she voluntarily began an
account of herself.

CHAP. V.

"MY father," said Jemima, "seduced my mother, a pretty girl, with whom he
lived fellow-servant; and she no sooner perceived the natural, the
dreaded consequence, than the terrible conviction flashed on her--that
she was ruined. Honesty, and a regard for her reputation, had been the
only principles inculcated by her mother; and they had been so forcibly
impressed, that she feared shame, more than the poverty to which it would
lead. Her incessant importunities to prevail upon my father to screen her
from reproach by marrying her, as he had promised in the fervour of
seduction, estranged him from her so completely, that her very person
became distasteful to him; and he began to hate, as well as despise me,
before I was born.

"My mother, grieved to the soul by his neglect, and unkind treatment,
actually resolved to famish herself; and injured her health by the
attempt; though she had not sufficient resolution to adhere to her
project, or renounce it entirely. Death came not at her call; yet sorrow,
and the methods she adopted to conceal her condition, still doing the
work of a house-maid, had such an effect