The Land of Bondage: A RomanceBloundelle-Burton, John
History
The Land of Bondage: A Romance
Bloundelle-Burton, John
Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Virginia -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction
My deepest gratitude is due to you for the pains you have been at to
write to me under the care of my late uncle's bankers, which
communication has safely reached me. Sir, I do most grievously note
that my lord and husband, the Viscount St. Amande lyeth sick unto
death--(Mr. Kinchella had written when Quin had learned from the woman
my father lodged with that there was no hope for him)--and also in
dire poverty; and, ill as he hath treated me, I do pray that his end
may be peace. Moreover, if you or any friend of yours should see him
and he should be able to comprehend your words, I do beseech you to
tell him that I forgive him all he has done to me and that, in another
and a better world, to which I believe myself to be also hastening, I
hope to meet him once more, though, whether he live or die, we can
never meet again upon this earth.
But, sir, if the news which you give me of the grievous state in which
my lord lies is enough to wring my heart, what comfort and joy shall
not that heart also receive in learning that my beloved child, whom I
thought dead and slain by his father's cruelty, is still alive, and
that he, whom I have mourned as gone from me for ever, should live to
be restored to his mother's arms? Yet, alas! I cannot come to him as I
fain would and fold him in my arms, for I am sorely stricken with the
palsy which creepeth ever on me, though, strange to relate, there are
moments, nay hours, when I am free from it, so that sometimes my
physician doth prophesy a recovery, which, however, I cannot bring
myself to hope or believe. And, moreover, honoured sir, I am without
the means to travel to Dublin. My uncle, when he rescued me from my
unhappy husband's hands, provided me with one hundred guineas a year,
which, at his death last year, he also willed, should be continued to
me while parted from my husband. But if he dies that ceases also,
since my uncle, the Duke, did naturally suppose that I by settlement
shall be well provided for, tho' now I doubt if such is likely to
prove the case.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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