error for colonel die come in and who was convinced that solicitude foi brought him thither and who saw that solicitude in his disturbed and melancholy look and in his anxious though brief after her could not forgive her sister for him so lightly i met mrs in bond street said he after the first salutation and she encouraged me to come on and i was the more easily encouraged because thought it probable that i might find you alone which i was very desirous of doing my object � my wish � my sole wish in desiring it � i hope i believe it is � is to be a means of giving comfort � no i must not say comfort � not present comfort � but conviction lasting conviction to your sister s mind my sense and sensibility regard for her for yourself for your � will you allow me to prove it by relating some circumstances which nothing but a very sincere regard � nothing but an earnest desire of being useful � i think i am justified � though where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that i am right is there not some reason to fear i may be wrong he stopped i und you said you have something to tell me of mr that will open his character farther your telling it will be the greatest act of friendship that can be shown my gratitude will be immediately by any information tending to that end and hers must be gained by it in time pray pray let me hear it you shall and to be brief when i quitted last october � but this will give you no idea � i must go farther back you will find me a very awkward miss i hardly know where to begin a short account of myself i believe will be necessary and it shall be a short one on such a subject sighing heavily i can have little temptation to be he a moment for recollection and then with another sigh went on you have probably entirely forgotten a conversation � it is not to be supposed that it could make any impression on you � a conversation between us one evening at park � it was the evening of a dance � in which i alluded to a lady i had once known as resembling in some measure your ter indeed answered i have not forgotten it he looked pleased by this remembrance and added � if i am not deceived by the uncertainty the partiality of tender recollection there is a very strong resemblance between them as well in mind as person the same warmth of heart the same eagerness of fancy and spirits this lady was one of my nearest relations an orphan from her infancy and under the of my father our ages were nearly the same and from our earliest years we were and friends i cannot remember the time when i did not love and my affection for her as we grew up was such as perhaps judging from my present forlorn and cheerless gravity you might think me incapable of having ever felt hers and sensibility for me was i believe fervent as the attachment ot your sister to mr and it was though from a different cause no less unfortunate at seventeen she was lost to me for ever she was married � married against her inclination to my brother her fortune was large and our family estate much and this i fear is all that can be said for the conduct of one who was at once her uncle and guardian my brother did not deserve her he did not even love her i had hoped that her regard for me would support her under any and for some time it did but at last the misery of her situation for she experienced great overcame all her resolution and though she had promised me that nothing � but how blindly i relate i have never told you how this was brought on we were within a few hours of together for scotland the treachery or the folly of my cousin s maid betrayed us i was banished to the house of a relation far distant and she was allowed no liberty no society no amusement till my father s point was gained i had depended on her fortitude too far and the blow was a severe one � but had her marriage been happy so young as i then was a few months must have reconciled me to it or at least i should not have now to lament it this however was not the case my brother had no regard for her his pleasures were not what they ought to have been and from the first he treated her the consequence of this upon a mind so young so lively so inexperienced as mrs s was but too natural she resigned herself at first to all the misery of her situation and happy had it been if she had not lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me occasioned but can we wonder that with such a husband to provoke and without a friend to advise or restrain her for my father lived only a few months after their marriage and i was with my regiment in the east indies she should fall had i remained in england perhaps � but i meant to promote the happiness of both by removing from her for years and for that purpose had procured my exchange the shock which her marriage had given me he continued in a voice of great agitation was of trifling weight � was nothing to what i felt when i heard about two years afterwards of her divorce it was that which threw this gloom � � ven now the recollection of what i suffered and he could say 