of ignorance and pride; I was treated as though I had been the most
abject of beings, even at a time when my conscious spirit soared as far
above their powers to wound it as the mountain towered over the white
battlements of my then solitary habitation.

After my removal to Trevecca, I seldom saw Miss Robinson or Mrs. Molly;
Mr. Harris never called on me, though I was not more than a mile and a
half from Tregunter. At length the expected, though to me most perilous,
moment arrived, which awoke a new and tender interest in my bosom, which
presented to my fondly beating heart my child,--my Maria. I cannot
describe the sensations of my soul at the moment when I pressed the
little darling to my bosom, my maternal bosom; when I kissed its hands,
its cheeks, its forehead, as it nestled closely to my heart, and seemed
to claim that affection which has never failed to warm it. She was the
most beautiful of infants! I thought myself the happiest of mothers; her
first smile appeared like something celestial,--something ordained to
irradiate my dark and dreary prospect of existence.

Two days after my child was presented to this world of sorrow, my nurse,
Mrs. Jones, a most excellent woman, was earnestly desired by the people
of the manufactory to bring the infant among them; they wished to see
the "young squire's baby, the little heiress to Tregunter." It was in
vain that I dreaded the consequences of the visit, for it was in the
month of October; but Mrs. Jones assured me that infants in that part of
the world were very frequently carried into the open air on the day of
their birth; she also hinted that my refusal would hurt the feelings of
the honest people, and wear the semblance of pride more than of maternal
tenderness. This idea decided my acquiescence; and my little darling,
enveloped in the manufacture of her own romantic birthplace, made her
first visit to her kind but unsophisticated countrywomen.