met, she said, "Theresa, am I so much altered in so short a time, or are you ashamed to recognise such a one as I am?"

"Good heavens," I exclaimed, starting back, while immediate conviction flashed on my mind, "is it possible that I behold the Countess Ruperta?"

It was indeed that most unhappy and guilty lady, and as I stooped to caress and support her, she fainted in my arms.

I hastened to administer restoratives, and soaking some bread in wine, made her swallow it before I would allow her to exert herself again.

As she lay senseless on that squalid pallet, I could scarcely believe my eyes, that the miserable, half-starved, half-clad object stretched. out before me, was, only thirteen months before, the gayest of the gay, the most splendid, the most adored, and the most beautiful of women. Guilt alone had brought her to this abject state. How my heart ached as I gazed upon that once heavenly face.

When sufficiently composed, she informed

me that within six weeks after the villain Phillibert had enticed her from her once happy and splendid home, he began to neglect and illtreat her, particularly when he found that she had brought no money away with her, merely the jewels (which, however, were of considerable value) which she wore on the fatal night of her elopement. Finding also that if he showed himself he should be liable to the damages which had been awarded against him, and also to the personal chastisement which it was reported the injured and furious earl had threatened to bestow upon him, he determined to go to America, taking with him the product of her jewels, which he had sold, and leaving her sick and alone in a paltry lodging. She had been stripped of every thing but the clothes she had on, by the artful and profligate Smithson, who, she had soon discovered, was an old paramour of the brutal marquis, and who accompanied him in his flight to the United States.

Broken-hearted, and ashamed to inform her friends of her deplorable condition, she had

lingered on from day to day, and week to week, living by working at her needle, and on the casual charity of the English residents, who, however, were utterly ignorant of her previous rank and history.

At last, bowed down by grief and sickness, she must have perished had it not been for the compassion of the humane laundress, on whose bounty she was now living. That good creature finding that the unhappy lady was an Englishwoman, took her to the humble shelter of her own apartments, saying that she had received much kindness and great employment from her countrypeople, and that she could not bear to see one of that nation in want.

It was with great difficulty the poor lady could conclude her sad history, exhausted as she was by grief, shame, and sickness.

After she had again allowed me to give her some refreshment, she gained sufficient strength to tell me, that hearing the young Blanchisseuse accidentally mention the name of the family by whom she and her mother were employed, she ventured to put a few

VOL. II.

K

questions, and found that her injured husband and neglected children were indeed inhabitants of the same city as herself; and when, upon further inquiry, she found that I had the care of her little ones, she resolved to endeavour to obtain an interview with me, and, as has been seen, she succeeded.

Nothing could exceed the desponding state of her mind. She was evidently without hope of forgiveness in this world or in the next.

"Oh! Theresa!" she said, "could those weak and wicked women, who like me are tempted to desert their homes, their husbands, and their children, by fiends in human shape, but see me now, surely they would draw back from the hideous gulf! Where was my guardian angel when I took that first guilty step? How often do I now think of that fatal evening, when, my heart failing me as I went down to the carriage, I turned into the library to bid my poor husband an eternal farewell; and as my hand rested on the lock of the door, I felt all the horrors of the step I was about to take, and all at once resolved to abandon it. I entered

the room with the hope of finding him there, whom it was my pleasure, to love. have been saved. and while I stood doubtful, that demon in a female form, Smithson, appeared at my side, urging me to leave one, who, she said, she knew cared nothing for me; while she swore that the villain Phillibert so adored me that he positively meant to destroy himself if I disappointed him. Saying this, she hurried me, poor, blind, wretched, wicked fool that I was, into the hall, and under pretence of seeing me properly wrapped up, never left me till she saw me safe in the carriage which was to convey me from a splendid happy home to infamy and eternal despair.

duty, as it really was my Had he been there I should

Alas! alas! he was gone,

"Tell me about my children, Theresa," she continued in a voice of agony, "those dear deserted little ones. Do they ever name their guilty mother? Oh! might I but once press my lips to their innocent ones, and on my knees implore the pardon of their much injured father, I think that I could die content."