eople about me
too!--I have not had good people about me for a long, long time before;
so that [with a half-smile] I had begun to wonder whither they were all
gone.

Her nurse and Mrs. Smith, who were present, took occasion to retire: and,
when we were alone, You seem to be a person of humanity, Sir, said she:
you hinted, as I was leaving my prison, that you were not a stranger to
my sad story. If you know it truly, you must know that I have been most
barbarously treated; and have not deserved it at the man's hands by whom
I have suffered.

I told her I knew enough to be convinced that she had the merit of a
saint, and the purity of an angel: and was proceeding, when she said, No
flighty compliments! no undue attributes, Sir!

I offered to plead for my sincerity; and mentioned the word politeness;
and would have distinguished between that and flattery. Nothing can be
polite, said she, that is not just: whatever I may have had; I have now
no vanity to gratify.

I disclaimed all intentions of compliment: all I had said, and what I
should say, was, and should be, the effect of sincere veneration. My
unhappy friend's account of her had entitled her to that.

I then mentioned your grief, your penitence, your resolutions of making
her all the amends that were possible now to be made her: and in the most
earnest manner, I asserted your innocence as to the last villanous
outrage.

Her answer was to this effect--It is painful to me to think of him. The
amends you talk of cannot be made. This last violence you speak of, is
nothing to what preceded it. That cannot be atoned for: nor palliated:
this may: and I shall not be sorry to be convinced that he cannot be
guilty of so very low a wickedness.----Yet, after his vile forgeries of
hands--after his baseness in imposing upon me the most infamous persons
as ladies of honour of his own family--what are the iniquities he is not
capable of?

I would then have given her an account of the trial you stood with your
friends: your own previous resolutions of marriage, had she honoured you
with the requested four words: all your family's earnestness to have the
honour of her alliance: and the application of your two cousins to Miss
Howe, by general consent, for that young lady's interest with her: but,
having just touched upon these topics, she cut me short, saying, that was
a cause before another tribunal: Miss Howe's letters to her were upon the
subject; and as she would wri