tunately for her, was alone in her own room; she opened it, and read as follows:—
CLIFFORD'S LETTER.
"I have promised to write to you, and I sit down to perform that promise. At this moment the recollection of your goodness, your generous consideration, is warm within me; and while I must choose calm and common words to express what I ought to say, my heart is alternately melted and torn by thoughts which would ask words, oh how different! Your father has questioned me often of my parentage and birth—I have hitherto eluded his interrogatories. Learn now who I am. In a wretched abode, surrounded by the inhabitants of poverty and vice, I recall my earliest recollections. My father is unknown to me as to every one—my mother! to you I dare not mention who or what she was;—she died in my infancy. Without a name, but not without an inheritance,—(my inheritance was large—it was infamy!)—I was thrown upon the world: I
