to promote the
happiness of both by removing from her for years, and for that purpose
had procured my exchange. The shock which her marriage had given me,"
he continued, in a voice of great agitation, "was of trifling
weight--was nothing to what I felt when I heard, about two years
afterwards, of her divorce. It was _that_ which threw this
gloom,--even now the recollection of what I suffered--"

He could say no more, and rising hastily walked for a few minutes
about the room. Elinor, affected by his relation, and still more by
his distress, could not speak. He saw her concern, and coming to her,
took her hand, pressed it, and kissed it with grateful respect. A few
minutes more of silent exertion enabled him to proceed with composure.

"It was nearly three years after this unhappy period before I returned
to England. My first care, when I _did_ arrive, was of course to seek
for her; but the search was as fruitless as it was melancholy. I could
not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every reason to
fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a life of
sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance, and I learnt from my
brother that the power of receiving it had been made over some months
before to another person. He imagined, and calmly could he imagine it,
that her extravagance, and consequent distress, had obliged her to
dispose of it for some immediate relief. At last, however, and after I
had been six months in England, I _did_ find her. Regard for a former
servant of my own, who had since fallen into misfortune, carried me
to visit him in a spunging-house, where he was confined for debt; and
there, in the same house, under a similar confinement, was my
unfortunate sister. So altered--so faded--worn down by acute suffering
of every kind! hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure
before me, to be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl,
on whom I had once doted. What I endured in so beholding her--but I
have no right to wound your feelings by attempting to describe it--I
have pained you too much already. That she was, to all appearance, in
the last stage of a consumption, was--yes, in such a situation it was
my greatest comfort. Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time
for a better preparation for death; and that was given. I saw her
placed in comfortable lodgings, and under proper attendants; I v