Lord and Lady Alphingham had, at the earliest threatening of disturbances, retreated to their chateau in the province of Champagne.

I forwarded the melancholy intelligence to them, and returned to my own hotel sick at heart with the sight I had witnessed.

The fearful tone of his last words, the agonized shriek, rung in my ears, as the shattered form and face floated before my eyes, with a tenacity no effort of my own or even of my Louisa's could dispel.

Oh, my mother, what do I not owe you for guarding me from the temptations that have assailed this wretched young man, or rather for imprinting on my infant mind those principles which, with the blessing of our heavenly Father, have thus preserved me.
Naturally, my temper, my passions were like his, in nothing was I his superior; but it was your hand, your prayers, my mother, planted the seeds of virtue, your gentle firmness eradicated those faults which, had they been fostered by indulgence, might have rendered my life like Cecil Grahame's, and exposed me in the end to a death like his.

What would have availed my father's judicious guidance, my brother's mild example, had not the soil been prepared by a mother's hand and watered by a mother's prayers?
blessings, a thousand blessings on your head, my mother! Oh, may my children learn to bless theirs even as I do mine; they cannot know a purer joy on earth.
* * * * * "We have arrived at Rouen in safety.