little anxiety now and then about a letter
reaching its destination, and being duly received; peevishly refusing
to mention to me even so much as the address on it. But I guessed who
it had been sent to easily enough, when his lawyers told me that he had
written it in London, and had mentioned to them that it was going to
some place beyond the seas. He soon seemed to forget this though, and
to forget everything, except his regular question about Mary, which he
sometimes repeated in his dazed condition, even after I had broken it to
him that she was dead.

"The news of her death came in the March month of the new year, 1828.

"All inquiries in London had failed up to that time in discovering
the remotest trace of her. In Dibbledean we knew she could not be; and
elsewhere Joshua was now in no state to search for her himself; or to
have any clear notions of instructing others in what direction to make
inquiries for him. But in this month of March, I saw in the Bangbury
paper (which circulates in our county besides its own) an advertisement
calling on the friends of a young woman who had just died and left
behind her an infant, to come forward and identify the body, and take
some steps in respect to the child. The description was very full and
particular, and did not admit of a doubt, to any one that knew her
as well as I did, that the young woman referred to was my guilty and
miserable niece. My brother was in no condition to be spoken to in this
difficulty; so I determined to act for myself. I sent by a person
I could depend upon, money enough to bury her decently in Bangbury
churchyard, putting no name or date to my letter. There was no law to
oblige me to do more, and more I was determined not to do. As to the
child, that was the offspring of her sin; it was the infamous father's
business to support and own it, and not mine.

"When people in the town, who knew of our calamity, and had seen the
advertisement, talked to me of it, I admitted nothing, and denied
nothing--I simply refused to speak with them on the subject of what had
happened in our family.

"Having endeavored to provide in this way for the protection of my
brother and myself against the meddling and impertinence of idle people,
I believed that I had now suffered the last of the many bitter trials
which had assailed me as the consequences of my niece's guilt: I was
mistaken: the cup of my affliction was not yet full. One day, hardly a
fortnight after I