visit; after chatting some time, "My dear Marchioness, (said he) I sincerely lament the unhappy fate of your charming sister; she has certainly the worst husband in the world; she is shut up, denied all society; he is jealous, cruel, and revengeful: I am sorry to grieve you, but I tremble for her life—she cannot long support such wretchedness. The poor Chevalier, (added he) has been absent from hence ever since her marriage: I am told he is now daily expected; he will hear most afflictive news, for her happiness is the chief wish of his heart." I answered this worthy man, and told him my sister's reserve, as to her husband's treatment of her: he praised her prudence, and added, your father had two motives in obliging her to marry the Count; he was disappointed in both, for he was no stranger to her situation before he died. "And what, Sir, was his other motive?" "An intention to marry a relation of the Count's, but she absolutely refused him, and married another two month's ago. You know, I suppose, added he, that the Count was a widower?" "No, Sir, I never heard that circumstance." "Why, it is a black story, as it is reported: 'tis said about three years ago he married a young lady, an orphan, of good family, but small fortune, at Bern, in Switzerland; that he treated her so ill as to cause her death, and left two children, who were put to nurse, afterwards taken from thence, without any one's knowing what became of them; however your father told me the Count informed him they were both dead. Almost every person believes his wife and children came to an untimely end; but he is a man of such rank and large possessions, nobody chuses to say much. I hinted the affair to your father, but fortune and love was too powerful to be given up, he affected not to believe it; but after his own disappointment, he thought more of his daughter, and had he not been so suddenly cut off, I believe would have interfered, at least, I am sure, would have made some separate
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