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Rh that sorrow I should else have felt for the loss of so near and dear a relation. My father, who had, perhaps, more tenderness for her than he was sensible of himself, survived her not more than half a year, but died with the same resolution that he had lived, to prevent my marriage with Armuthi; and that he might the more certainly do so, he left my fortune dependent on my brother, and to be forfeited to him if ever I became the wife of that present gentleman; and lest my tears should work on his yielding nature to consent to it, the estate was to descend to him, to be the portion of another; both of us to be cut off from his name and title, and as we obeyed this injunction to be blessed or cursed. Severe decree of a dying parent! yet such was the aversion he had conceived for this match, that he would omit nothing which he thought might be a means to hinder it. All the hopes I had on the known sweetness of my brother's disposition were new vanished, since he could not consent I should be the bride of Armuthi, without incurring the curse of our father; nor had the power to preserve me from beggary, without being made a beggar himself. I thought my condition now more desperate than ever; I had indeed no longer obstacles to keep me from converging with this idol of my soul, as often or as freely as I pleased; but to what end did I see or converse with him, but to become more unhappy by the daily discovery of some new charm, and the reflection that I must never be more his than now I was? I had but one faint shadow of comfort, and that was, that at my brother's return, which was now expected every hour, I should persuade him to mitigate the sentence of my father's testament; and though he could not suffer me to receive my dowry, might evade the penalty of paying it, by allowing me the interest of it per annum, under the denomination of charity. This I sometimes flattered myself I should persuade him to do, and it was this alone which the unhappy Armuthi and myself had to preserve us from despair; for he,