The Adopted Daughter: A Tale for Young Persons

eir kind friend, she recollected the promise she had given An

s escaped me you may have formed a wrong idea, and think that I was not so happy i

in the morning; and when he had loaded my plate with every thing he called nice, and what he thought I should like, and allowed me as much fruit after dinner as I could eat, and gave me one or two glasses of wine to help my digestion (and truly I needed something for that purpose, as I never rose from the table without a violent head-ach), he would drink himself five or six times that quantity, and then fall asleep; and I was

s daughter; and, except the time your good mother took to teach me my letters and to spell a little, with the use of a needle and thread, I was allowed to play the rest of the day with Anna

uctance, as I have been told, my father consented. My aunt was much older than her husband, and he paid her but little attention; her fortune had been his chief inducement to marry, and of this he made ample use, though what w

d her he left my education entirely to her. "Yet," said he, "I think my dear little Maria don't look so brisk and lively as when she was at the farm." I took this opportunity of inquiring for the friends I had left there; but he could not tell me half I wished to know, as how Anna was, and whether she went to school,

taught in it; and when I say this, my dear friends, perhaps you will not imagine it was much more than was good. I learnt from the masters who attended those accomplishments which are regularly introduced into schools; from the governess, all that feigned politeness, which teaches us to appear glad to see a person when we are not so; to tell them they look well, when their appearance is just the contrary; to ac

ere, while here it was in daily requisition: for I had always some fault of my schoolfellows, if not of my own, to hide; and though from them I learnt to laugh at m

s daughter to despise him. But when in the summer vacations I accompanied my aunt into Leicestershire, he would visit us for a day or two, and was evidently pleased when my aunt told him I was wonderfully improved, and knew as m

our old friends, the Ca

my mind, 'and I hope I never shall;' and my inquiries were

promise of making as good men as your father was. From my pocket allowance I was enabled to send my good old n

d he to my aunt, 'and then what sort of fig

e a fault in any thing I said or did; and I was sure to meet with indulgence from him, whenever I needed it. He appeared to have been doubly kind to me after I had lost him, but the new mourning I now appeared in, and the increased consequence I gained in the school, and with my aunt, on being the heiress of Rosewood and Coombdale, both my father

th my aunt, whose circle of acquaintance was much larger, and very different from hers. My aunt went round to about a dozen houses, while Mrs. Meridith visited all who lived at the west end of the town, and was intimate with but a very few: to her therefore I was consigned to see the world, which, in the meaning they attach to it, is to dance at several balls, dine at different houses, yet mostly meet the same company; a

tal of their friend would not cost her all the anguish he had apprehe

ed to the world, for I should make a terrible figure in i

then at college; but after I was so much at his mother's (for the evening parties to which I constantly accompanied her were so much later than my aunt's, that she allowed me to take up my residence there when we were in town,) he came home at the vacations, and I was introduced to him; and this Mr. Meridith, you will readily suppose, w

hough in a humbler way. Human nature is the same every where, and a deceitful heart the characteristic which the word of God has given to m

ure told Mrs. Meridith the alteration her last conversatio

ness, which I fear is not to be met with in the circles

society have the advantage, for they are not ashamed to own themselves mis