fair and accomplished daughter of the village surgeon; but his previous
character caused her to keep her own correspondence with him secret from
her parents, to whom even the circumstance of her being acquainted with
D------ was wholly unknown, till her father received a letter from him,
in which he assured him of his attachment to Emma long before his
departure from Fife; that having been so happy as to gain her
affections, he would have made her his wife before leaving his native
country, had he then had the means of supporting her in a suitable rank
through life; and that, having it now in his power to do so, he only
waited the consent of her parents to fulfil the vow he had formerly made.

The Doctor having a large family, with a very limited income to support
them, and understanding that D------ had at last become a person of
sober and industrious habits, he gave his consent, in which Emma's
mother fully concurred.

Aware of the straitened circumstances of the Doctor, D------ remitted a
sum of money to complete at Edinburgh Emma's Oriental education, and fit
her out in her journey to India; she was to embark at Sheerness, on
board one of the Company's ships, for a port in India, at which place,
he said, he would wait her arrival, with a retinue suited to a person of
his rank in society.

Emma set out from her father's house just in time to secure a passage,
as proposed by her intended husband, accompanied by her only brother,
who, on their arrival at Sheerness, met one C------, an old schoolfellow,
captain of the ship by which Emma was to proceed to India.

It was the particular desire of the Doctor that his daughter should be
committed to the care of that gentleman, from the time of her leaving