for the advice she had given me! But she was now dead, and past the reach of my reproaches. The thoughts that he must be the inheritor of the estate of my dear son, drove me almost to madness, and filled me by degrees with a kind of hatred to that poor innocent, who was but guilty of offending me through my own fault; for I must acknowledge, that from his earliest infancy till this time, he has discovered such a sweetness of disposition, as would have made me happy in being the mother of such a son, had I in reality been so. He is now esteemed the finest gentleman in this part of the country; and, in spite of the prejudice of nature, I cannot but confess, that in many things he very much excells his supposed brother; yet, deserving as he is, oh Miramillia! he is a stranger to my blood, and is it not hard that he should deprive him, who is not, of his inheritance? Yet, by what means shall I avoid it? A thousand times, in the fondness of soul for the other, I have opened my mouth to tell the chevalier the whole story; but fear and shame as often prevented me from speaking. I cannot discover the fraud I have been guilty of, without exposing myself at once to the indignation, and, perhaps, eternal hatred of a husband who is very dear to me, and the just censure and reproaches of the whole world; for it cannot be supposed, but that Herranius, so is my pretended son called, would inveigh loudly against the injustice of my proceedings. But if I were so disposed, I know not by what means I should make out the truth of what I say; Estharia is dead, as I have before observed; there was but one person beside her let into the secret, who also is no more. I know not from whom that subtle creature procured him; nor can I, by any other proof but my own oath, make out that he is not mine: I should incur the "hate and scorn of all who know me; and, perhaps, leave hings in the same position they were in before. Was ever affliction equal to mine? Have you, in all your inquisition after happiness, found a person more
