Let him reside
with you at Silsea, under the tuition of proper instructors--breed
him up in nobleness and truth--and let not his early nurture, and
the care with which I have sought to instil into his mind principles
of honour and virtue, be utterly lost. Let his happiness be the
pledge of my dutiful fulfilment of the task I have undertaken; and
may God desert me and him, when I fail through negligence or
hardness of heart.
"And if at times the stigma of his birth should present itself to
irritate your mind against his helpless innocence, as alas! I have
latterly witnessed, smite him not, Greville, in your guilty wrath--
remember he is come of gentle blood, even on his mother's side--and
ask yourself to _whom_ we owe our degradation, and from whose quiver
the arrow was launched against us? And now farewell--may the Almighty
enlighten and forgive you--and if in this address there appears a
trace of bitterness, do not ascribe it to any uncharitable feelings,
but look back upon the past, and think on what I was--on what I am.
Consider whether ever woman loved or trusted as I have done, or was
ever more cruelly betrayed? Oh! Greville, Greville!--did I not regard
you with an affection too intense for my happiness! did I not confide
in you with a reverence, a veneration unmeet to be lavished on a
creature of clay? But you have broken the fragile idol of my worship
before my eyes--and the after-path of my life is dark with fear and
loneliness.
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