of all that had passed on the
subject of this unfortunate infant soon circulated through the village;
and Agnes in a few weeks had seen her parents pine away in grief and
shame at her loss of virtue.

She perceived the neighbours avoid, or openly sneer at _her_; but that
was little--she saw them slight her aged father and mother upon her
account; and she now took the resolution rather to perish for want in
another part of the country than live where she was known, and so entail
an infamy upon the few who loved her. She slightly hoped, too, that by
disappearing from the town and neighbourhood some little reward might be
allowed her for her banishment by the dean's family. In that she was
deceived. No sooner was she gone, indeed, than her guilt was forgotten;
but with her guilt her wants. The dean and his family rejoiced at her
and her child's departure; but as this mode she had chosen chanced to be
no specified condition in the terms proposed to her, they did not think
they were bound to pay her for it; and while she was too fearful and
bashful to solicit the dean, and too proud (forlorn as she was) to
supplicate his son, they both concluded she "wanted for nothing;" for to
be poor, and too delicate to complain, they deemed incompatible.

To heighten the sense of her degraded, friendless situation, she knew
that Henry had not been unmindful of his promise to her, but that he had
applied to his cousin in her and his child's behalf; for he had
acquainted her that William's answer was--"all obligations on _his_ part
were now undertaken by his father; for that, Agnes having chosen (in a
fit of malignity upon his marriage) to apprise the dean of their former
intercourse, such conduct had for ever cancelled all attention due from
him to her, or to her child, beyond what its bare maintenance exacted."

In vain had Henry explained to him, by a second application, the
predicament in which poor Agnes was involved before she consented to
reveal her secret to his father. William was happy in an excuse to rid
himself of a burthen, and he seemed to believe, what he wished to be
true--that she had forfeited all claim to his farther notice.

Henry informed her of this unkind reception of his efforts in her favour
in as gentle terms as possible, for she excited his deepest compassion.
Perhaps our _own_ misfortunes are the cause of our pity for others, even
more than _their_ ills; and Henry's present sorrows had softened his
hear