produce? My lady's sagacity is obscured by the benevolence of her
temper. Her brother was sordidly wicked,--a hoary ruffian, to whom the
language of pity was as unintelligible as the gabble of monkeys. His
heart was fortified against compunction, by the atrocious habits of
forty years; he lived only to interrupt her peace, to confute the
promises of virtue, and convert to rancour and reproach the fair dame of
fidelity.

He was her brother still. As a human being, his depravity was never
beyond the health-restoring power of repentance. His heart, so long as
it beat, was accessible to remorse. The singularity of his birth had
made her regard this being as more intimately her brother, than would
have happened in different circumstances. It was her obstinate
persuasion that their fates were blended. The rumour of his death she
had never credited. It was a topic of congratulation to her friends, but
of mourning and distress to her. That he would one day reappear upon the
stage, and assume the dignity of virtue, was a source of consolation
with which she would never consent to part.

Her character was now known. When the doom of exile was pronounced upon
him, she deemed it incumbent on her to vindicate herself from aspersions
founded on misconceptions of her motives in refusing her interference.
The manuscript, though unpublished, was widely circulated. None could
resist her simple and touching eloquence, nor rise from the perusal
without resigning his heart to the most impetuous impulses of
admiration, and enlisting himself among the eulogists of her justice and
her fortitude. This was the only monument, in a written form, of her
genius. As such it was engraven on my memory. The picture that it
described was the perpetual companion of my thoughts.