“Yes--you have endured much indeed,” said Mr Villiers, still more bitterly than before: “but it has been your own fault. Do you remember the interviews I had with you in prison both prior and subsequent to your condemnation? Did you not exhibit every sign of the deepest contrition--utter every possible vow of amendment? And what were the results? Arrived in the colony, you became unruly--profligate--a perfect scandal where all is scandalous--shameless where every thing is shameful----” “Listen to me, Clarence!” exclaimed his aunt, rising from the sofa and advancing towards him: “it is so easy to reproach--but not so easy to admit of extenuation for guilt. As God is my judge, my penitence in Newgate was sincere--my contrition unfeigned! I even longed for the hour of my departure to arrive, that I might for ever quit a country where I had played so vile a part, and to some extent retrieve my character in a penal colony. But when I set foot on board the convict-ship, I found myself thrown into the depths of a very sink of immorality,--plunged into an infernal stew of profligacy, from which escape was impossible. I threw myself on my knees before the surgeon, and implored him to remove me from that dreadful assemblage of fiends in female shape: he laughed at me, and bade me return to my place. Then my companions abused and ill-treated me for having dared to complain;--and the babe which I bore in my arms was made the subject of the bitterest taunts and most cutting gibes. I had named her _Perdita_--as you well know--that her lost and hopeless condition, through the infamy of her mother, might ever be retained fresh in my memory, and that the necessity of toiling hard and honourably for her might be impressed on my soul even by the warning nature of that very name. But, oh! those wretches, with whom I was forced to associate, levelled the most cruel jeers and jests against me on account of that innocent babe; because she was born in Newgate! And nothing is so galling--nothing so terribly afflicting--nothing so poignantly cutting, as to insult a woman through the medium of her illegitimate, helpless babe! My God! what bitter tears I shed on board that convict-ship,--tears which seemed to sear my very countenance as they fell, so scalding were they! Then the frightful scenes which were enacted in our cabin,--the quarrelling that took place, the imprecations that accompanied even the simplest remark, the obscene tales that were told,--oh! it was horrible, horrible. I struggled against the contamination as mortal being never struggled before:--but it was like a combat between a drowning person and the fury of a whelming torrent,--a vain, ineffectual, and useless fight, in which I felt myself to be completely powerless;--until, in despair, I resigned myself to the flood that was whirling me along in its triumphant course;--and I found relief even in drinking of that feculent, fœtid stream from which there was no escape. Yes--thus was I drawn down into