Page:The Mysterious Warning - Parsons (1796, volume 2).djvu/86

 my return, but came too late; the night preceding my arrival my father expired. I was deeply affected, and still more so when the steward, and an intimate friend of our family, informed me, that a day or two previous to my return, he accused himself as the destroyer of my happiness, and entreated his friend to exert his best endeavours to procure a reconciliation between Count Zimchaw and myself; acquainting the former, that he lamented the part he had acted, and besought him to spare himself a similar regret in his last stage of life, by consenting to the union so long projected by both families, and so hastily and unwarrantably broken off by passion and prejudice."

"But, alas! in the same moment that I had this pleasing acknowledgment on the part of my father, I was told Count Zimchaw had taken his daughter into Bavaria, and that a report was current in the country that she was married to Baron S. Distracted at this intelligence, I sent to the Count's mansion to know the exact truth, and