and at last informed the family, that she had a reason for not living
with her husband, which must some time remain a secret--they stared--Not
live with him! how will you live then? This was a question she could not
answer; she had only about eighty pounds remaining, of the money she
took with her to Lisbon; when it was exhausted where could she get more?
I will work, she cried, do any thing rather than be a slave.




CHAP. XXIII.


Unhappy, she wandered about the village, and relieved the poor; it was
the only employment that eased her aching heart; she became more
intimate with misery--the misery that rises from poverty and the want of
education. She was in the vicinity of a great city; the vicious poor in
and about it must ever grieve a benevolent contemplative mind.

One evening a man who stood weeping in a little lane, near the house she
resided in, caught her eye. She accosted him; in a confused manner, he
informed her, that his wife was dying, and his children crying for the
bread he could not earn. Mary desired to be conducted to his
habitation; it was not very distant, and was the upper room in an old
mansion-house, which had been once the abode of luxury. Some tattered
shreds of rich hangings still remained, covered with cobwebs and filth;
round the ceiling, through which the rain drop'd, was a beautiful
cornice mouldering; and a spacious gallery was rendered dark by the
broken windows being blocked up; through the apertures the wind forced
its way in hollow sounds, and reverberated along the former scene of