of improvement or pleasure.

These were reasons why I should be contented with my lot. These
circumstances alone would have rendered it more eligible than any other,
but it had additional and far more powerful recommendations, arising
from the character of Mrs. Lorimer, and from the relation in which she
allowed me to stand to her.

How shall I enter upon this theme? How shall I expatiate upon
excellencies which it was my fate to view in their genuine colours, to
adore with an immeasurable and inextinguishable ardour, and which,
nevertheless, it was my hateful task to blast and destroy? Yet I will
not be spared. I shall find, in the rehearsal, new incitements to
sorrow. I deserve to be supreme in misery, and will not be denied the
full measure of a bitter retribution.

No one was better qualified to judge of her excellencies. A casual
spectator might admire her beauty, and the dignity of her demeanour.
From the contemplation of those, he might gather motives for loving or
revering her. Age was far from having withered her complexion, or
destroyed the evenness of her skin; but no time could rob her of the
sweetness and intelligence which animated her features. Her habitual
beneficence was bespoken in every look. Always in search of occasions
for doing good, always meditating scenes of happiness, of which she was
the author, or of distress, for which she was preparing relief, the most
torpid insensibility was, for a time, subdued, and the most depraved
smitten by charms of which, in another person, they would not perhaps
have been sensible.

A casual visitant might enjoy her conversation, might applaud the