Mrs.Linwood praised my filial devotion, my fortitude and heroism.
Dr.Harlowe had told her how I had braved the terrors of midnight solitude through the lonely woods, to bring him to a servant's bedside.
Richard Clyde had interested her in my behalf.

She told me I had many friends for one so young and so retiring.

Oh! she little knew how coldly fell the words of praise on the dull ear of despair.

I smiled at the thought of needing kindness and protection when _she_ was gone.

As if it were possible for me to survive my mother! Had she not herself told me that grief did not kill?
But I believed her not.
Do you ask if I felt no curiosity then, about the mystery of my parentage?
I had been looking forward to the time when I should be deemed old enough to know my mother's history of which my imagination had woven such a web of mystery and romance,--when I should hear something of that father whose memory was curtained by such an impenetrable veil.