Page:The Mysterious Warning - Parsons (1796, volume 3).djvu/246

 "For some time after your departure, my friend Theresa exerted herself to heal the wounds of my mind, and administer to the recovery of my health. I was grateful for her kindness, though it had not its deserved success. Unhappily she caught the contagion of melancholy, and from a disposition of the most enchanting vivacity, changed to a despondency, a kind of habitual gloom in every word and action, that alarmed us inexpressibly. The distress and despair of Mr. D'Alenberg cannot be expressed. She resisted every persuasion, even prayers and tears, to draw from her the cause of such an alarming change, always protesting she could not account for it; that she had no disquietudes, nor any thing that afflicted her mind, but that she had taken an inclination for a monastic life. This inclination her worthy father opposed, and besought her, in the most moving terms, not to desert him, and render his future days wretched.

With some difficulty she was brought to relinquish her design, and promised she would