Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Arthur Mervyn, Vol. 2: Or Memoirs of the Year 1793
The appearance of pestilence, meanwhile, threw them into panic, and they hastened to remove from danger. Mrs. Villars appears to have been a woman of no ordi nary views. She stooped to the vilest means of amass ing money; but this money was employed to secure to herself and her daughters the benefits of independence.
She purchased the house which she occupied in the city, and a mansion in the environs, well built and Splendidly furnished. To the latter, she and her family, of which the Italian girl was now a member, retired at the close of July.
I have mentioned that the source of my intelligence was a kinsman, who had been drawn from the paths of sobriety and rectitude by the impetuosity of youthful passions. He had power to confess and deplore, but none to repair, his errors. One of these women held him by a Spell which he struggled in vain to dissolve, and by which, in Spite of resolutions and remorses, he was drawn to her feet, and made to sacrifice to her plea sure his reputation and his fortune.
My house was his customary abode during those inter vals in which he was persuaded to pursue his profession. Some time before the infection began its progress, he had disappeared. No tidings were received of him, till a messenger arrived, entreating my assistance. I was conducted to the house of Mrs. Villars, in which I found no one but my kinsman. Here, it seems, he had im mured himself from my inquiries, and, on being seized by the reigning malady, had been deserted by the family, who, ere they departed, informed me by a messenger of his condition.
Despondency combined with his disease to destroy him. Before he died, he informed me fully of the character of his betrayers. The late arrival, name, and personal con dition of Clemenza Lodi were related. Welbeck was not named, but was described in terms which, combined with the narrative of Mervyn, enabled me to recognise the paramour of Lucy Villars in the man whose crimes had been the principal theme of our discourse.
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