"
"No, Carlotta," said I; "I do not wish for your death, though you have
plotted mine. I have been faithful to you, and loved you, until you
made this attempt."
"Will you forgive me before I die?" said she; "for die I must, now
that I know you will quit me!" Uttering these words, she threw herself
on the floor with violence, and her head coming in contact with the
broken fragments of the basin, she cut herself, and bled so copiously
that she fainted. The old woman had fled, and I was left alone with
her, for poor little Sophy was frightened, and had hidden herself.
I lifted Carlotta from the floor, and, placing her in a chair, I
washed her face with cold water; and having staunched the blood,
I laid her on her bed, when she began to breathe and to sob
convulsively. I sat myself by her side; and as I contemplated her
pale face and witnessed her grief, I fell into a train of melancholy
retrospection on my numerous acts of vice and folly.
"How many warnings," said I, "how many lessons am I to receive before
I shall reform? How narrowly have I escaped being sent to my account
'unanealed' and unprepared! What must have been my situation if I had
at this moment been called into the presence of my offended Creator?
This poor girl is pure and innocent, compared with me, taking into
consideration the advantages of education on my side, and the want
of it on hers. What has produced all this misery and the dreadful
consequences which might have ensued, but my folly in trifling with
the feelings of an innocent girl, and winning her affections merely
to gratify my own vanity; at the same time that I have formed a
connection with this unhappy creature, the breaking of which will
never cause me one hour's regret, while it will leave her in misery,
and will, in all probability, embitter all her future existence? What
shall I do? Forgive, as I hope to be forgiven: the fault was more mine
than hers.
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