Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/49

 character of this lady, and had nothing to fear from injustice and caprice: I did not regard her with filial familiarity; but my attachment and reverence would have done honour to that relation. I performed for her the functions of a steward; her estates in the city were put under my direction. She placed boundless confidence in, my discretion and integrity, and consigned to me the payment, and in some degree the selection and government, of her servants. My station was a servile one; yet most of the evils of servitude were unknown to me: my personal ease and independence were less infringed than that of those who are accounted the freest members of society. I derived a sort of authority and dignity from the receipt and disbursement of money: the tenants and debtors of the lady were, in some respects, mine; it was, for the most part, on my justice and lenity that they depended for their treatment. My lady's household establishment was large and opulent: her servants were my inferiors and menials. My leisure was considerable, and my emoluments large enough to supply me with every valuable instrument of improvement or pleasure.

"These were reasons why I should be contented with my lot; these circumstances alone would have rendered it more eligible than any other: but it had additional and far more powerful recommendations, arising from the character of Mrs. Lorimer, and from the relation in which she allowed me to stand to her.

"How shall I enter upon this theme? How shall I expatiate upon excellencies which it was my fate to view in their genuine colours, to adore with an immeasurable and inextinguishable ardour, and which, nevertheless, it was my hateful task to blast and destroy? Yet I will not be spared: I shall find in the rehearsal new incitements to sorrow: I deserve to be supreme in misery, and will not be denied the full measure of a bitter retribution.

"No one was better qualified to judge of her excellencies. A casual spectator might admire her beauty, and the dignity of her demeanour: from the contemplation of those, he might gather motives for loving or revering her. Age was far from having withered her complexion, or destroyed