Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/374

 "Whilst I was in this unhappy situation Livia's brother died; and as he had before lost his wife and children, and Livia was his nearest relation, in consideration of my kindness to her, and knowing her extravagant temper, he left me in full possession of all his fortune, which amounted to twenty thousand pounds. This was a very seasonable relief to me; but yet it was some time before I could in the least recover my constitution; during which time she nursed me with all the assiduity of the most tender wife in the world, in hopes of getting this new fortune from me. She sat up with me whole nights; and as she was always with me, her flattery at last got such an ascendant over me, that I was besotted to her love, and forgot I had ever been a father. Thus getting rid of my most painful thought, and in possession of a plentiful fortune, I soon grew well and strong again. But Livia's dissimulation cost her her life, for the delicacy of her frame could not support the fatigue she had undergone during my illness, and she fell into a nervous fever, of which she died. "That distemper naturally inclines people to all manner of horrible thoughts; and as her crimes were such as greatly heightened all the terrors of it, she was at last, by the perturbation of her own mind, forced to confess to me all the arts she had used to make me have an ill opinion of you while you lived with me; and that she had afterwards falsely accused you of a crime she had no reason to suspect you of, in order to prevent any means of a reconciliation between us. "Imagine now, my dear children, what I felt when the consideration of this woman's perfidiousness brought back to my memory all your goodness; and when 1 considered what miseries you must have been exposed to in being abandoned to the wide world without any support, I thought I should