Page:Adventures of Rachel Cunningham.djvu/13

 of fashion and splendour of folly; expensive entertainments to numerous parties were given, on which large sums were expanded, and the gaming-table, at which she was an adept, was also made a source of revelrous excesses. Although he (Mr. Haverley,) was aware of her naturally intemperate disposition, her proneness to incontinence, and her ready-yielding of herself, in fondness of variety, to the amorous embraces of others than himself, both while with her aunt and since she had been under his protection, yet his whole heart, soul and warm affections were so bound up and rivetted in  his attachment to her, so infatuated was he by her charms and syren-arts, that he, even then and knowing all this would have sacrificed himself and her, had she not positively refused her acceptance of his offers, alleging as her reason for declining the honour proposed, that as they had and could still, in freedom enjoy the sweet pleasures of love, it would be nonsense, she thought, to shackle them in the yoke of matrimony, which would only legalize their connection to destroy the richest zest of their enjoyments in it.

So little did any sense of shame operate upon her feelings, that the heroine of this Millwood-drama, after an absence of about two years and a half, having resolved to revisit Bedford, that season, actually wrote to her aunt for apartments to be prepared for her and inamorato, so far, however, in this instance, assuming virtue though she had it not, as by her signature to imply, that her connection with Mr. Haverley, was honourable and had been legally consummated. The subjoined is a verbatim copy of her letter on this occasion to Mrs. Wallington, her aunt:

", I shall not trouble yon with any apology either for my abrupt departure or for my silence since that period, as