band's treatment of her: he praised her prudence, and added, your father had two motives in obliging her to marry the Count; he was disappointed in both, for he was no stranger to her situation before he died. "And what, Sir, was his other motive?" "An intention to marry a relation of the Count's, but she absolutely refused him, and married another two month's ago. You know, I suppose, added he, that the Count was a widower?" "No, Sir, I never heard that circumstance." "Why, it is a black story, as it is reported: 'tis said about three years ago he married a young lady, an orphan, of good family, but small fortune, at Bern, in Switzerland; that he treated her so ill as to cause her death, and left two children, who were put to nurse, afterwards taken from thence, without any one's knowing what became of them; however your father told me the Count informed him they were both dead. Almost every person believes his wife and children came to an untimely end; but he is a man of such rank and large possessions, nobody chuses to say much.I hinted
