ABSTRACT
At home and alone Rosalie had time to reflect on the story she had heard; and though she knew very little of the world, and Mrs. Vyvian had failed to be very minute in many parts of her story, it seemed certain that the family of Mr. Ormsby had been the principal instruments in terrifying her into a marriage, which would have rendered her life miserable even if her heart and her person had not belonged to another. The Italian letter, which was probably written in that language lest it should fall into other hands, and might have been read had it been in English; the improbability that George Ormsby should venture to appear about Holmwood, unless with the connivance of some of the family, if not of Mr. Montalbert; and the eagerness with which Mrs. Lessington and Mr. Hayward had adopted the views of Mr. Montalbert, though they knew her situation, were a combination of circumstances which seemed to leave no doubt in the mind of Rosalie but that her mother had been betrayed by some or all those whom she considered as her best friends. Their motives were probably good; but Rosalie could not help reflecting, that had not such been their conduct, she might now have been the acknowledged daughter of the most tender and affectionate of mothers; she might have known and been blessed by the fondness and protection of her father; and they might in a happy union have effaced the remembrance of their early indiscretion, for the death of Mr. Montalbert would soon have left his daughter at liberty, and her life would not have been passed in the miseries of such a marriage, nor her spirits have been overwhelmed with the consciousness of being the wife of one man while her whole heart was another’s.
