Can you wonder, then, that she soon fell into the ways of vice? Beautiful as she was--and is--she soon attracted notice;--and your fine English officers--the gentlemen sent out to protect the colony,--_they_ were the authors of her ruin--and they encouraged her in a career of infamy. Oh! Clarence, it is a frightful thing for me to stand before you--you, who are my own nephew--and have to make such horrible revelations: but you reproach me for my own wickedness--you would seek to represent me as the cause of my daughter’s wickedness--and I am forced to explain to you the appalling nature of the influences acting upon us, and the circumstances surrounding us. Now--now, I could weep in humiliation;--but an hour hence, I shall be obdurate and hardened as ever. The world has made me so.” “And now what do you propose to do?” enquired Clarence. “It is impossible for me even to advise you in the frightful position in which you are placed, and since you have acted so completely in opposition to my counsel by returning to England. Pecuniary assistance--_that_ I can afford you to a limited amount----” “Give me fifty guineas, Clarence--and you shall never see me more,” interrupted his aunt. “I will spare you a hundred,” answered the generous-hearted young man; and quitting the room, he returned in a few minutes, bringing the money in a bag. “Here,” he said,--“take that, my poor aunt--and may God make it prosper in your hands. But, oh! suffer not your daughter to continue in the ways of vice and depravity: remember that she possesses an immortal soul--and that there is another world in which an account must be given for the conduct pursued in this.” The old woman made no answer; but, clutching the bag eagerly, she secured it amongst her tattered garments. Then, ashamed of the greedy impatience which she had manifested, and seeking to avert her nephew’s attention from the fact by turning the conversation into another channel, she said, “I hope you continue to enjoy that happiness, Clarence, which yourself and your excellent Adelais so much deserve!” “Thank God! my felicity is as complete as man’s can be in this world,” was the reply. “Having now for upwards of nineteen years held the good situation which my kind patron, the Earl of Ellingham, gave me, I have enjoyed a certain means of existence--have acquired influential friends--and have been enabled to rear my sons and daughters in a way which, I hope, will be salutary to them on their entrance into life.” “And that man--my husband--have you heard of him lately?” enquired Villiers’ aunt, in a low tone and hesitating way. “Never since the occasion--and that is now nine years ago--when he wrote to announce the death of poor Rosamond at Geneva. I mentioned that fact to you in a letter which accompanied one of the remittances I made to Sydney on your behalf----” “And from that time you have received no tidings of my husband?”