'But methinks I hear you say, that Editha might never be informed of my past errors. Alas! wretched must that woman be whose happiness and respectability depend on the secrecy of others! Besides, did I not think the concealment of crime in itself a crime, how could I know an hour of peace while I reflected that a moment's malice, or inadvertency, in one of Editha's companions might cause her to blush at her mother's disgrace?--that, while her young cheek was flushed perhaps with the artless triumphs of beauty, talent, and virtue, the parent who envied me, or the daughter who envied her might suddenly convert her joy into anguish and mortification, by artfully informing her, with feigned pity for my sorrows and admiration of my penitence, that I had once been a _disgrace_ to that family of which I was now the pride?--No--even if I were not for ever separated in this world from the only man whom I ever loved with passionate and well-founded affection, united for life to the object of my just aversion, and were I not conscious (horrible and overwhelming thought!) of having by my example led another into the path of sin,--still, I repeat it, for my child's sake I should wish to die, and should consider, not early death, but lengthened existence, as a curse.' So Adeline reasoned and felt in her moments of reflection: but the heart had sometimes dominion over her; and as she gazed on Editha, and thought that Mrs Mowbray might be induced to receive her again to her favour, she wished even on any terms to have her life prolonged. CHAPTER XXVI Having finished her letter to Colonel Mordaunt and Berrendale, she again prepared to write to her mother; a few transient fears overcoming every now and then those hopes of success in her application, which, till she took up her pen, she had so warmly encouraged. Alas! little did she know how erroneously for years she had judged of Mrs Mowbray. Little did she suspect that her mother had long forgiven her; had pined after her; had sought, though in vain, to procure intelligence of her; and was then wearing away her existence in solitary woe, a prey to self-reproach, and to the corroding fear that her daughter, made desperate by her renunciation of her, had, on the death of Glenmurray, plunged into a life of shame, or sunk, broken-hearted, into the grave! for not one of Adeline's letters had ever reached Mrs Mowbray; and the mother and daughter had both been the victims of female treachery and jealousy. Mrs Mowbray, as soon as she had parted with Adeline for the last time, had dismissed all her old servants, the witnesses of her sorrows and disgrace, and retired to her estate in Cumberland,--an estate where Adeline had first seen the light, and where Mrs Mowbray had first experienced the transport of a mother. This spot was therefore ill calculated to banish Adeline from her mother's thoughts, and to continue her seclusion from her affections.