ady was one of my nearest relations, an
orphan from her infancy, and under the guardianship of my father. Our
ages were nearly the same, and from our earliest years we were
playfellows and friends. I cannot remember the time when I did not
love Eliza; and my affection for her, as we grew up, was such, as
perhaps, judging from my present forlorn and cheerless gravity, you
might think me incapable of having ever felt. Her's, for me, was, I
believe, fervent as the attachment of your sister to Mr. Willoughby
and it was, though from a different cause, no less unfortunate. At
seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married--married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be
said for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
My brother did not deserve her; he did not even love her. I had hoped
that her regard for me would support her under any difficulty, and for
some time it did; but at last the misery of her situation, for she
experienced great unkindness, overcame all her resolution, and though
she had promised me that nothing--but how blindly I relate! I have
never told you how this was brought on. We were within a few hours of
eloping together for Scotland. The treachery, or the folly, of my
cousin's maid betrayed us. I was banished to the house of a relation
far distant, and she was allowed no liberty, no society, no amusement,
till my father's point was gained. I had depended on her fortitude too
far, and the blow was a severe one, but had her marriage been happy,
so young as I then was, a few months must have reconciled me to it,
or at least I should not have now to lament it. This however was not
the case. My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not
what they ought to have been, and from the first he treated her
unkindly. The consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so
inexperienced as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned
herself at first to all the misery of her situation; and happy had it
been if she had not lived to overcome those regrets which the
remembrance of me occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a
husband to provoke inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or
restrain her (for my father lived only a few months after their
marriage, and I was with my regiment in the East Indies) she should
fall? Had I remained in England, perhaps--but I meant