He saw her concern, and coming to her, took her hand, pressed it, and kissed it with grateful respect.

A few minutes more of silent exertion enabled him to proceed with composure.
"It was nearly three years after this unhappy period before I returned to England.

My first care, when I DID arrive, was of course to seek for her; but the search was as fruitless as it was melancholy.

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a life of sin.

Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor sufficient for her comfortable maintenance, and I learnt from my brother that the power of receiving it had been made over some months before to another person.