To Mrs. Fitzgerald.
Temple-house, Friday.
My Rivers has told you--my sweet friend, in what words shall I
convey to you an adequate idea of your Emily's transport, at a
discovery which has reconciled all her duties!
Those anxieties, that sense of having failed in filial obedience,
which cast a damp on the joy of being wife to the most beloved of
mankind, are at an end.
This husband whom I so dreaded, whom I determined never to accept,
was my Rivers.
My father forgives me; he pardons the crime of love: he blesses that
kind providence which conducted us to happiness.
How many has this event made happy!
The most amiable of mothers shares my joy; she bends in grateful
thanks to that indulgent power who has rewarded her son for all his
goodness to her.
Rivers hears her, and turns away to hide his tears: her tenderness
melts him to the softness of a woman.
What gratitude do we not owe to heaven! may the sense of it be for
ever engraven on our hearts!
My Lucy too; all, all are happy.
But I will tell you. Rivers has already acquainted you with part of
my story.
My uncle placed me, with a servant, in whom he could confide, in a
convent in France, till I was seven years old; he then sent for me to
England, and left me at school eight years longer; after which, he took
me with him to his regiment in Kent, where, you know, our friendship
began, and continued till he changed into another, then in America,
whither I attended him.
My father's affairs were, at that time, in a situation, which
determined my uncle to take the first opportunity of marrying me to
advantage.
I regarded him as a father; he had always been more than a parent to
me; I had the most implicit deference to his will.
He engaged me to Sir George Clayton; and, when dying, told me the
story of my birth, to which I had till then been a stranger, exacting
from me, however, an oath of secresy till I saw my father.
He died, leaving me, with a trifle left in trust to him for my use
from my grandfather, about two thousand pounds, which was all I, at
that time, ever expected to possess.
My father was then thought ruined; there was even a report of his
death, and I imagined myself absolute mistress of my own actions.
I was near two years without hearing any thing of him; nor did I
know I had still a father, till the letters you brought me from Mrs.
Melmoth.
A variety of accidents, and our being both abroad, and in such
distant parts of the world, prevented his letters arriving.
In this situation, the kind hand of heaven conducted my Rivers to
Montreal.