Page:The Mysterious Warning - Parsons (1796, volume 3).djvu/90

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other reply, but "I shall attend you, Sir," my father quitted the house.

He employed the intermediate time in writing to me; lamented his inability to provide for me, and advised me, rather than submit to be confined as a pensioner of the Count's, "to take the veil, if it might be allowed to me under my own name, or the one I bore in the convent." This letter he carried in his pocket to the field of action the next morning, and was very soon joined by the Count and a surgeon, the gentleman who had kindly taken me from the place of my confinement. This gentleman he was astonished to see. He had formerly been a surgeon to a regiment in which my father had a company. On recognizing my father, he advanced, and expressed his regret at being called to attend in such an affair between two gentlemen he respected, and inquired, with some earnestness, if the dispute could not be amicably settled.

"My father replied in the negative—"His own honour, and the peace and ho-