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All that I have borne from others is short of what I have suffered from that lady! The debasing suspicions of Mrs. Maple, the taunting tyranny of Mrs. Ireton, though they make me blush to owe,—or rather, to earn from them the subsistence without which I know not how to exist; have yet never smote so rudely and so acutely to my inmost heart, as the attack I endured from Mrs. Howel! They rob me, indeed, of comfort, of rest, and of liberty—but they do not sever me from Lady Aurora!"
"Alas, my Miss Ellis! and have I, too, joined in the general persecution against such afflicted innocence? I feel myself the most unpardonable of all not to have acquiesced, without one ungenerous question, or even conjecture; in full reliance upon the right and the necessity of your silence. I ought to have forseen that if it were not improper you should comply, your own noble way of thinking would have made all entreaty as useless as it has been imper-
