her to actions which necessity might
urge her to, while her better reason disapproved them: she shall never
want a friend while I live, but I never more desire to behold her; her
presence would be always painful to me, and a glance from her eye would
call the blush of conscious guilt into my cheek.

"I will write a letter to her, which you may deliver when I am gone, as
I shall go to St. Eustatia the day after my union with Julia, who will
accompany me."

Belcour promised to fulfil the request of his friend, though nothing
was farther from his intentions, than the least design of delivering the
letter, or making Charlotte acquainted with the provision Montraville
had made for her; he was bent on the complete ruin of the unhappy girl,
and supposed, by reducing her to an entire dependance on him, to bring
her by degrees to consent to gratify his ungenerous passion.

The evening before the day appointed for the nuptials of Montraville and
Julia, the former refired early to his apartment; and ruminating on the
past scenes of his life, suffered the keenest remorse in the remembrance
of Charlotte's seduction. "Poor girl," said he, "I will at least write
and bid her adieu; I will too endeavour to awaken that love of virtue in
her bosom which her unfortunate attachment to me has extinguished." He
took up the pen and began to write, but words were denied him. How could
he address the woman whom he had seduced, and whom, though he thought
unworthy his tenderness, he was about to bid adieu for ever? How should
he tell her that he was going to abjure her, to enter into the most
indissoluble ties with another, and that he could not even own the
infant which she bore as his child? Several letters were begun and
destroyed: at length he completed the following:

TO CHARLOTTE.

"Though I have taken up my pen to address you, my poor injured girl, I
feel I am inadequate to the task; yet, however painful the endeavour, I
could not resolve upon leaving you for ever without one kind line to bid
you adieu, to tell you how my heart bleeds at the remembrance of what
you was, before you saw the hated Montraville. Even now imagination
paints the scene, when, torn by contending passions, when, struggling
between love and duty, you fainted in my arms, and I lifted you into
the chaise: I see the agony of your mind, when, recovering, you found
yourself on the road to Portsmouth: but how, my gentle girl, how could
you, when so justly impressed w