During his residence in London, from 1710 to 1712, regardless of the ties that bound him to Stella, he allowed himself to be engaged by the amiable qualities of Miss Esther Vanhomrigh; and, without explaining the nature of those ties to his new idol, strove by his assiduities to obtain a return of affection, while he studiously concealed from the unhappy Stella the wrong he was consciously doing her. [The consequences of this double connection form one of the most tragic stories in our language--the formal ceremony by which he made Stella his wife, under the cloud of secrecy, and still keeping her from the enjoyment of her rights; the death of Miss Vanhomrigh of a broken heart, and the miserable fate of Stella.] Vanessa (so he called Miss Vanhomrigh) was now dead. The grave had heaped its tranquillising mould on her agitated heart, and given her tormentor assurance that he should no more suffer from her reproaches on earth; and yet, though with her the last pretext was extinguished for refusing to acknowledge the wife he had so infamously abused, we find him, with this dreadful example before his eyes, persisting to withhold from his remaining victim that late and imperfect justice to which her claim was so apparent, and from the denial of which she was sinking before his eyes in sickness and sorrow to the grave. For the sake of avoiding some small awkwardness or inconvenience to himself,--to be secured from the idle talking of those who might wonder why, since they were to marry, they did not marry before, or perhaps merely to retain the object of his regard in more complete subjection and dependence,--he could bear to see her pining year after year in solitude and degradation, and sinking at last to an untimely grave, prepared by his hard and unrelenting refusal to clear her honour to the world even at her dying hour. ESTHER VANHOMRIGH. [1723.] SIR WALTER SCOTT.