Page:Glenarvon (Volume 3).djvu/308

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of piety and benevolence, retired to the Garden Cottage, a small estate the Duke of Altamonte had settled on her; and she found that religion and virtue, even in this world, have their reward. The coldness, the prejudice, which, in the presumption of her heart had once given her an appearance of austerity, softened in the decline of life; and when she considered the frailty of human nature, the misery and uncertainty of existence, she turned not from the penitent wanderer who had left the right road, and spoke with severity alone of hardened and triumphant guilt. Her life was one fair course of virtue; and when she died, thousands of those whom she had reclaimed or befriended followed her to the grave.

As to the Princess of Madagascar, she lived to a good old age, though death repeatedly gave her warning of his approach. "Can any humiliation, any sacrifice avail?" she cried, in helpless alarm, seeing his continual advances. "Can I yet be saved?" she said, ad-