Page:Modern Literature Volume 3 (1804).djvu/253

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O'Rourke's last adventures; not forgetting the impenitent obduracy with which he braved eternity. When this letter arrived, the old gentleman was taking his afternoon glass, in his daughter's apartment, while she, in the last stage of weakness, sought some relief from the uniformity of the sick bed, by reclining in an easy chair. Her father read the letter, and having seen its result, fell back on his seat without sense or motion. Having rung for servants, to afford her parent that assistance which she was unable to give herself, she snatched up the letter by which he was so grievously affected, and soon found that she was much more intimately and fatally concerned. Profligate ruffian as he was, she deplored him not as an abandoned miscreant, but as the husband whom she had so tenderly loved. On her deeper grief, the shock was less instantaneously violent than on