As I Never Expected To See
Her Any More, I Endeavoured Not To Preserve A Remembrance Which Would
Only Have
Given me disquiet, and, to confess the truth, soon forgot both
the pleasure and the pain I had experienced in
This, as well as some
other little sallies of my unthinking youth.
Many years passed over without my ever hearing any thing of her; and it
was some months after I received your letter from Aix-la-Chappelle, that
the post brought me one from Ireland: having no correspondence in that
country, I was a little surprized, but much more when I opened it and
found it contained these words:
To DORILAUS.
SIR,
"This comes to make a request, which I
know not if the acquaintance we had
together in the early part of both our lives,
would be sufficient to apologize for the trouble
you must take in complying with it: - permit
me therefore to acquaint you, that I have long
laboured under an indisposition which my physicians
assure me is incurable, and under which
I must inevitably sink in a short time; but
whatever they say, I know it is impossible
for me to leave the world without imparting
to you a secret wholly improper to be entrusted
in a letter, but is of the utmost importance
to those concerned in it, of whom yourself
is the principal: - be assured it regards
your honour, your conscience, your justice, as
well as the eternal peace of her who conjures
you, with the utmost earnestness, to come immediately
on the receipt of this to the castle of
M - - e, in the north of Ireland, where, if
you arrive time enough, you will be surprized,
tho' I flatter myself not disagreeably so, with
the unravelling a most mysterious Event.
Yours, once known by the name of MATILDA,
now
M - - E."
I will not repeat to you, my dear Louisa, continued Dorilaus, the
strange perplexity of ideas that run thro' my mind after having read
this letter: - I was very far from guessing at the real motive of this
invitation; which, however, as I once had a regard for that lady, I soon
determined to obey; and having left the care of my house to a relation
of mine by the mother's side, I went directly for Ireland; but when I
came there, was a little embarrassed in my mind what excuse I should
make to her husband for my visit. - Before I ventured to the castle, I
made a thorough enquiry after the character of this young lady, and in
what manner she lived with her lord. Never did I hear a person more
universally spoke well of: - the poor adored her charity, affability, and
condescending sweetness of disposition: - the rich admired her wit, her
virtue, and good breeding: - her beauty, tho' allowed inferior to few of
her sex, was the least qualification that seemed deserving praise: - to
add to all this, they told me she was a pattern of conjugal affection,
and the best of mothers to a numerous race of Children; - that her lord
had all the value he ought to have for so amiable a wife, and that no
wedded pair ever lived together in greater harmony; and it was with the
utmost concern, whoever I spoke to on this affair concluded what they
related of her with saying, that so excellent an example of all that was
valuable in womankind would shortly be taken from them; - that she had
long, with an unexampled patience, lingered under a severe illness which
every day threatened dissolution.
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