owers of observation were greatly impaired, seem to be aware of
the interruption. She spoke, notwithstanding her situation, with an
intelligible and even emphatic voice; her manner in a great measure
betraying the influence of the fever, and her tone and language seeming
much superior to her most miserable condition.

"I am not the abject creature which I seem," she said; "at least, I was
not born to be so. I wish I _were_ that utter abject! I wish I were a
wretched pauper of the lowest class--a starving vagabond--a wifeless
mother--ignorance and insensibility would make me bear my lot like the
outcast animal that dies patiently on the side of the common, where it
has been half-starved during its life. But I--but I--born and bred to
better things, have not lost the memory of them, and they make my
present condition--my shame--my poverty--my infamy--the sight of my
dying babes--the sense that my own death is coming fast on--they make
these things a foretaste of hell!"

Lady Penelope's self-conceit and affectation were broken down by this
fearful exordium. She sobbed, shuddered, and, for once perhaps in her
life, felt the real, not the assumed necessity, of putting her
handkerchief to her eyes. Lord Etherington also was moved.

"Good woman," he said, "as far as relieving your personal wants can
mitigate your distress, I will see that that is fully performed, and
that your poor children are attended to."

"May God bless you!" said the poor woman, with a glance at the wretched
forms beside her; "and may you," she added, after a momentary pause,
"deserve the blessing of God, for it is bestowed in vain on those who
are unworthy of it!"

Lord Etherington felt, perhaps, a twinge of conscience; for he said,
something hastily, "Pray go on, good woman, if you really have any thing
to communicate to me as a magistrate--it is time your condition was
somewhat mended, and I will cause you to be cared for directly."

"Stop yet a moment," she said; "let me unload my conscience before I go
hence, for no earthly relief will long avail to prolong my time here.--I
was well born, the more my present shame! well educated, the greater my
present guilt!--I was always, indeed, poor, but I felt not of the ills
of poverty. I only thought of it when my vanity demanded idle and
expensive gratifications, for real wants I knew none. I was companion of
a young lady of higher rank than my own, my relative however, and one of
such exquisite kindnes