r, suffered, under the cottage roof, as much affliction as
ever visited a palace.

Tyrants, who have embrued their hands in the blood of myriads of their
fellow-creatures, can call their murders "religion, justice, attention to
the good of mankind." Poor Agnes knew no sophistry to calm _her_ sense
of guilt: she felt herself a harlot and a murderer; a slighted, a
deserted wretch, bereft of all she loved in this world, all she could
hope for in the next.

She complained bitterly of illness, nor could the entreaties of her
father and mother prevail on her to share in the sports of this general
holiday. As none of her humble visitors suspected the cause of her more
than ordinary indisposition, they endeavoured to divert it with an
account of everything they had seen at church--"what the bride wore; how
joyful the bridegroom looked;"--and all the seeming signs of that
complete happiness which they conceived was for certain tasted.

Agnes, who, before this event, had at moments suppressed the agonising
sting of self-condemnation in the faint prospect of her lover one day
restored, on this memorable occasion lost every glimpse of hope, and was
weighed to the earth with an accumulation of despair.

Where is the degree in which the sinner stops? Unhappy Agnes! the first
time you permitted indecorous familiarity from a man who made you no
promise, who gave you no hope of becoming his wife, who professed nothing
beyond those fervent, though slender, affections which attach the rake to
the wanton; the first time you interpreted his kind looks and ardent
prayers into tenderness and constancy; the first time you descended from
the character of purity, you rushed imperceptibly on the blackest crimes.
The more sincerely you loved, the more you plunged in danger: from one
ungoverned passion proceeded a second and a third. In the fervency of
affection you yielded up your virtue! In the excess of fear, you stained
your conscience by the intended murder of your child! And now, in the
violence of grief, you meditate--what?--to put an end to your existence
by your own hand!

After casting her thoughts around, anxious to find some bud of comfort on
which to fix her longing eye; she beheld, in the total loss of William,
nothing but a wide waste, an extensive plain of anguish. "How am I to be
sustained through this dreary journey of life?" she exclaimed. Upon this
question she felt, more poignantly than ever, her loss of innocence: