A Description of Millenium Hall: And the Country Adjacent Together with the Characters of the Inhabitants and Such Historical Anecdotes and Reflections As May Excite in the Reader Proper Sentiments of Humanity, and Lead the Mind to the Love of Virtue
John Stuart Mill · en
She was not however so totally engrossed by this pleasing dissipation as
to neglect any means of serving the distressed. Mrs Tonston, exerting
the genius she had so early shewn for traducing others, set her husband
and his family at variance, till at length the falsehoods by which she
had effected it came to be discovered. Her husband and she had never
lived well together, and this proof of her bad heart disgusted him so
entirely that he turned her out of his house, allowing her a mere trifle
for her support. In this distress she applied to Harriot, who she knew
was ever ready to serve even those who had most injured her.
Her application was not unsuccessful. Harriot sent her a considerable
present for her immediate convenience and then went into the country to
Mr Tonston, to whom she represented so effectually his ungenerous
treatment, since the fortune his wife brought him gave her a right to a
decent maintenance, that he made a proper settlement upon her and gave
the writings into Harriot's hands, who not only saw the money paid
regularly, but took so much pains to convince Mrs Tonston of the
malignity of her disposition that she brought her to a due sense of it,
and by applying for his assistance to mend her heart, who best knew its
defects, she became so altered in temper that five years after her
separation from her husband Harriot effected a reconciliation, and they
now live in great amity together, gratefully acknowledging their
obligations to her.
I have anticipated this fact in order to render my narrative less
tedious, or I should have stopped at Harriot's procuring a settlement
for Mrs Tonston, and have told you that by lying in her return at an inn
where the smallpox then was she caught that distemper, and soon after
she arrived in London it appeared. I need not say that she had it to a
very violent degree. Being then in town I had the good fortune to nurse
her and flatter myself that my care was not useless; for in cases so
dangerous, no one who does not feel all the tender solicitude of a
friend can be a proper nurse.
Mrs Alworth wrote her husband word of Harriot's illness, who came post
to London, filled with the extremest anxiety, and shared the fatigue of
nursing with me; she was all the time delirious. When she came to her
senses, she at first seemed mortified to think Mr Alworth had seen her
in that disfigured condition; but on reflection told me she rejoiced in
it, as she thought it must totally extinguish his passion; and her
greatest solicitude was for his happiness. But she afterwards found her
expectation was ill grounded.
When she recovered, she perceived that the smallpox had entirely
destroyed her beauty. She acknowledged she was not insensible to this
mortification; and to avoid the observation of the envious or even of
the idly curious she retired, as soon as she was able to travel, to a
country house which I hired for her.