Page:The Mysterious Warning - Parsons (1796, volume 3).djvu/210

This page needs to be proofread.

between us, which should raise the dead;—to bid me "fly from her arms as I would avoid sin and death." Or why, if our union was sinful, why was the warning so late.

"Ah!" cried he, "if my father knew her, ought he not to have discovered the secret? But no, it was impossible; had he known she was the child of a woman he once fondly loved, surely he would have made inquiries after her and his own child, nor have left even Claudina in indigence; no, he could not have known this painful mystery, and my fatal impetuous passion blindly led me to credit any tale that the wretch Dupree might invent, and to unite myself to the daughter of an infamous woman, who has blighted all my prospects of happiness for ever. Yes, that woman, that mother, if from the grave she can behold the misery that has developed on me, will rejoice, perhaps, that her wrongs from the father are retaliated with bitterness on the son, and that her own offspring has revenged her injuries."