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 imagined, but cannot be described, and in all probability she would soon have sunk beneath it, had not her brother flown to her relief: an union just then completed with an heiress of considerable fortune, gave him the power of serving her as he wished, and he endeavoured to calm her sorrows by assurances of being a never-failing friend to her, and of supplying to me, to the utmost of his power, the place of the parent I was so early deprived of. He immediately took a small cottage, in a sequestered and romantic part of Dauphine, for her, and settled upon her a yearly stipend, amply sufficient to procure her all that she could want or desire in retirement.

"Time and religion softened her anguish, and as I grew up, her heart again began to be sensible of pleasure; a pleasure, however, frequently embittered by a conviction of the unhappiness her brother experienced in consequence of serving her; for his wife, selfish and illiberal in her disposition, could not with any degree of patience bear the idea of his regarding any one out of his own immediate