Page:The Mysterious Warning - Parsons (1796, volume 4).djvu/224

 He had not the smallest doubt but that Fatima was the Lady from whom they had taken the jewels, and the two Gentlemen, with whom she embarked from Pratt's-Grove at Vienna, two of this abandoned gang of ruffians, though he lamented the depravity of her heart, and detested the baseness of her character, he saw a severe retribution had overtaken her, and therefore felt an anxiety, mixed with compassion, for the uncertain fate of one who claimed her being from his, more than ever, revered father.

He could not bear to reflect on the conduct of Rhodophil; a regular course of duplicity, instigated by the vilest passions, had pervaded through his whole life, and when he considered how greatly his own senses and reason had been imposed upon by his artful management, when he found that even his father had been the dupe of a profound dissimulation, difficult to be conceived in the heart of man. He sighed for the late unhappy Claudina, who had fallen a victim to the same complicated baseness.