This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1791 edition. Excerpt: ... ** union, by informing me that she kneiss "you to be the daughter of my mother, M the daughter of that Mr. Everard who '* was my tutor, and that the woman she "had with her, who had been a servant '* in the house at the time, eould give the '* most indisputable account of your birth. "Stunned as by a stroke of thunder, I *' turned towards the woman, of whose "face as a servant of my mother's I had *' not the least recollection. I know not "what I said to her; I only remember *' that she gave, in a confused and vulgar "way, an account of what she pretended "to have been witness to. I suffered her "to talk on, for my very soul was sink*' ing with anguish. My mother's ho"nour destroyed! my Celestina torn from "me! My foul recoiled from the idea as. "from an execrable falsehood. Yet when ** I remembered the solemn injunction *' that beloved mother gave me in her "last moments to marry Miss Fitz-Hay man, the promise Ihe drew from me ne* ver otherwise to unite myself--when *' my agonized mind ran back to the dis"pleasure she sometimes expressed at my ** fondness and admiration for you--I M dared not, with all the pain and all the '** horror I felt, I dared not throw from me "with indignation this odious intelligence; ** I dared not load the hateful communi*' cators of it with the odium which would * have been dictated by my swelling heart, "had it not been checked by these sad n recollections, which pressed upon me "in despite of myself, and gave me some"thing like internal evidence of the facts n I would very fain have denied. ** There was, in the countenance of "Lady Castlenorth, something of info"lent triumph which I could not bear. "She made a merit of her disinterested "conduct, and talked of virtue, and ho"nour, and integrity, ...