e an
acquaintance, and at length the favoured inmate and friend, of your
father. Could I imagine the dangers that lurked beneath his roof? could
I believe that while I thus once more indulged in the social converse
to which I had been long a stranger, I should gain the affections of
his child? The playful girl towards whom my age enabled me to assume
an almost parental authority, while I exercised, in turn, the parts
of playmate and preceptor, beloved as she was in all the charms of
her dawning beauty, and artless naivete, inspired me with no deeper
sentiment; not even when I saw her gradually expand into the maturer
pride of womanhood, and acquire that feminine gentleness, that dignified
simplicity of character, which had attracted me in Theresa Marchmont.
Early in our intercourse, I had acquainted Lord Percy that the
confinement of a beloved wife in a state of mental derangement, was the
unhappy cause of my dejection and wandering habits of life; and I was
rejoiced to perceive that his own seclusion from the world had prevented
him from hearing my history related by others. He was also ignorant
of the name and connexions of the lady to whom he knew his beloved and
lamented son to have been attached; little indeed did he suspect his own
share in producing my domestic calamity.

"The disparity of our years, and their knowledge of my own previous
marriage, prevented them from regarding with suspicion the partiality
displayed by their Helen for my society, and the influence which I had
unconsciously acquired over her feelings. For a length of time I was
myself equally blind, and the moment I ventured to fear the dangers
of the attachment she was beginning to form. I took the resolution of
tearing myself altogether from her society, and without the delay of an
hour, I returned to Silsea.

"But what a scene did I select to reconcile me to the loss of the
cheerful society I had abandoned! My deserted home seemed haunted by
the shadows of the past, and tenanted only by remembrances of former
affliction. In my hour of loneliness and sorrow, I had no kind friend
to whom to turn for consolation; and for the first time the sterile and
gloomy waste over which my future path of life was appointed, filled me
with emotions of terror and regret. My very existence appeared blighted
through the treachery of others; and all those holy ties which enrich
the evening of our days with treasures far clearer than awaited us
even into the mor