You should be my mother's comforter, and you increase her pain. It ill suited you and your reverend character, thus to curse your greatest enemy; you should not have cursed him, villain as he is." "I did not curse him, child, did I?" "Indeed, sir, you did; you cursed him twice." "Then may Heaven forgive me and him if I did. And now, my son, I see it was more than human benevolence that first taught us to bless our enemies. Blessed be His holy name for all the good He hath given, and for all He hath taken away. But it is not—it is not a small distress that can wring tears from these old eyes, that have not wept for so many years. My child—to undo my darling! May confusion seize—Heaven forgive me!—what am I about to say? You may remember, my love, how good she was, and how charming: till this vile moment all her care was to make us happy. Had she but died! But she is gone; the honour of our family is contaminated, and I must look out for happiness in other worlds than here. But, my child, you saw them go off: perhaps he forced her away? If he forced her, she may yet be innocent." "Ah! no, sir," cried the child; "he only kissed her, and called her his angel, and she wept very much, and leaned upon his arm, and they drove off very fast." "She's an ungrateful creature," cried my wife, who could scarcely speak for weeping, "to use us thus; she never had the least constraint put upon her affections. The vile strumpet has basely deserted her parents without any provocation—thus to bring your grey hairs to the grave, and I must shortly follow." In this manner that night, the first of our real misfortunes, was spent in the bitterness of complaint and ill-supported sallies of enthusiasm. I determined, however, to find out our betrayer, wherever he was, and reproach his baseness. The next morning we missed our wretched child at breakfast, where she used to give life and cheerfulness to us all. My wife, as before, attempted to ease her heart by reproaches. "Never," cried she, "shall that vilest stain of our family again darken these harmless doors. I will never call her daughter more. No! let the strumpet live with her vile seducer: she may bring us to shame, but she shall never more deceive us."