Page:Adventures of Rachel Cunningham.djvu/19

 poignant grief she had predicted, she was in her tomb long before the day arrived that was to have made her the happy bride of the deluded, and thence faithless Mr. G.

Her friends severely upbraided him for his disgracefully heartless treatment of this young lady, by which he had thus prematurely deprived them of an amiable relative and lost to himself a virtuous partner worthy of his best and most tender affections, and would have been, as his wife, an ornament to him in the society in which he moved, while with this be also incurred the general censure lo all parties who knew them and were acquainted with the circumstances of his conduct; but such not-to-be-shaken ascendency had Rachel attained to over his every source and spring whence honourable sentiment emanates, that his feelings seemed wholly dead to all reproof and insensibly steeled against the admonitory effects of reflection.

At length, however, an incident occurred that roused his reason from the torpor into which too long his blind attachment to this syren, Rachel, by her wily arts bad lulled it.

On some account it happened, that an old and faithful servant who had years been in and was rigidly firm to the interests of the family, and who also had ever been a particular favourite of Mr. G's late father, had given her (Rachel) some offence, for which she took authority immediately to dismiss that servant from the establishment, but which dismissal Mr. G, not only refused to sanction, but also against the vehement remonstrances of his mistress recalled the servant to the situation so long faithfully held in the family; in consequence of this (and it was the first,) act of opposition to her will, she meditated fatal revenue; she watched her opportunity to effect her diabolical purpose, when a mere accidental circumstance totally defeated it and discovered her murderous intention. One evening, when it happened they were tete-a-tete, and while she affected a high degree of playful fondness, as he usually took his champagne out of a very large-sized goblet, he had filled his first glass and drank once, a small part of it only, with his taste full alive to its exquisite flavour, (to which circumstance alone may be attributed his escape from death,) when he had a necessity to withdraw for a few minutes from the apartment