Ah! Miss Dashwood--a subject such as this--untouched for fourteen years--it is dangerous to handle it at all! I WILL be more collected--more concise.

She left to my care her only child, a little girl, the offspring of her first guilty connection, who was then about three years old.

She loved the child, and had always kept it with her.

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family, no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school.

I saw her there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of the family property,) she visited me at Delaford.