The well-grounded and solid information possest by that dear girl, her firm attachment to virtue, duty, and truth, and the vast extent of her brilliant qualities, all lay concealed beneath the modest veil of rural simplicity, which hid from every eye the treasure we possest in her, and was for many years the means of preserving to us so invaluable a friend. We grew up with Amabel in the closest intimacy; we even obtained permission to accompany her in one of her visits to her father, and there became acquainted with an antient friend of our family. It was Gertrude Bernsdorf, who completed that part of our education, which was too difficult for the power of our young companion. Our eyes were opened; we saw all the dangers of our residence under Count Donat’s roof in their true light. We meditated an escape, whose object was taking refuge with you in the Convent of Zurich: but we were too well guarded to effect our purpose. Its true, no one suspected the open-hearted Amabel of deceit; but still a variety of attempts to carry us off had put our father on his guard, and we were seldom suffered to quit the Castle without attendants. I cannot persuade myself that it was a sentiment of paternal affection, which made the Count of Carlsheim so anxious to preserve us under his roof. His behaviour towards us left us no doubt, that we might have perished without our loss costing him a single tear; he had also frequently given us to understand, that he designed us for the Convent: but still he could not resolve to gratify those, who wished to take us from him, by suffering them to succeed; neither would he hear of our residing in _that_ Convent, where we should have been so happily and so honourably situated, under the protecting care of the venerable Urania. Since you, dear mother, abandoned the world, great alterations have taken place in our neighbourhood, of which you may not be aware: at least Gertrude has assured me, that for ten miles round the Castle of Sargans, every thing since the days of her youth is become so different, that she scarcely knows the place to be the same. Like most people when advanced in life, Gertrude was accustomed to find great faults with these changes: she hated the sight of trees, which thirty years before she had seen no higher than bushes; she sighed to perceive, that the mountain-torrents had washed away _this_ hill at one time and _that_ at another; and she looked on it as little better than profanation, when she found buildings raised on places, which formerly were corn-fields or pasture-land. But nothing was more offensive in her eyes than a particular Convent for females, which had been lately erected at no great distance from the Abbey of Cloister-Curwald; and which on account of the extraordinary privileges bestowed on it by the Holy Father, of the beauty of its situation, and of the advantageous manner in which its interior constitution was regulated, had grown rapidly into repute.