Sinclair answered not, but wept and embraced me. Tell me, continued I, what is my fate? Is it her hatred, or her loss, thou wouldst announce?
Sinclair’s lips opened to answer, and my heart sunk within me; I wanted the courage to hear him pronounce my sentence; “Oh, my friend!” added I, “my life this moment is in thy hands.”
The supplicating tone with which I spoke these words, sufficiently expressed my feelings. Sinclair looked at me with compassion in his eyes. “I can be silent,” said he, “but dare not deceive:” he stopt; I asked no more; and the rest of the road we both kept a profound silence, which was only interrupted by my sobs and sighs.
Sinclair conducted me to a country-house, where I at length received a confirmation of my misery: alas! all was lost: Julia existed no more; her death not only deprived me of all felicity, but took from me the means of repairing my faults, of expiating my past errors, except by regret, repentance, and by daily pouring out my silent griefs before an elegant Mausoleum, which the generous friendship of Sinclair had kindly caused to be erected to her memory in the neighbourhood of his country-house.
The remainder of my history has nothing interesting; consoled by time and religion, I consecrated the rest of my career to friendship, study, and the offices of humanity; I obtained my uncle’s pardon, and the care of making him happy became my greatest delight; and I fulfilled, without effort, and in their whole extent, those sacred duties which nature and gratitude required.
Though my uncle was far advanced in years, heaven still permitted him to remain with me ten years, after which I had the misfortune to lose him: I purchased his estate, and retired thither for the rest of my days.
Sinclair promised to come and see me once a-year, and though fifteen are now past since that event, we have never been eighteen months without seeing each other.
Sinclair, at present in his fifty-eighth year, has run a career the most brilliant and the most fortunate: a happy husband, a happy father, a successful warrior, covered with glory, loaded with fortune’s favours, he enjoys a felicity and fate the more transcendant, in that they only could be procured by virtue united to genius.
As for me, I, in my obscure mediocrity, might yet find happiness, were it not for the mournful, the bitter remembrance of the evils which others have suffered through the errors of my youth.
