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THE MYSTERIOUS WANDERER.
A NOVEL: IN THREE VOLUMES.
BY SOPHIA REEVE.
LONDON
AND SOLD BY RICHARDSON AND SON, ROYAL-EXCHANGE; J. HIGHLEY, FLEET-STREET; AND DIDIER AND TEBBETT, ST. JAMES'S-STREET.
MYSTERIOUS WANDERER.
"The sudden death of Sir James Elvyn," said Sir Henry, "and the deprivation of the fortunes he designed his daughters, you were long since, Captain Howard, informed of by Jarvis; I must therefore commence my narrative from the time those circumstances happened.
"With her fortune, Eliza Elvyn lost every attraction in the eyes of my grandfather, which could render an union between her and his son desirable; and he accordingly forbade my father to continue his addresses; but, finding his commands were disregarded, he hurried him to Caermarthen, where he endeavoured to enforce my father's obedience to relinquish Eliza, and address the daughter of Mr. Holly: but as every menace proved ineffectual, and intercepting a letter my father had written to Eliza, proposing an elopement; Sir Horace placed him in the strictest confinement, and, leaving the Hall, put in execution the simple piece of finesse by which he secured the person of Miss Elvyn, and with which you are already acquainted.
"Sir Horace conveyed her to the Hall, and to a private apartment adjoining his own; where he resolved she should remain till my father's marriage with Miss Holly was completed. This was prevented by my mother's elopement, and my father, seizing the first moment of liberty, flew to the late residence of his Eliza. She was gone; but where to, he could not trace! Sir Horace, however, feared it; and, though he had failed in one point, warily executed a plan, which put it beyond the power of fate ever to unite her to him.
"Prior to his marriage with my grandmother, he seduced the daughter of one of his tenants; and by her had a son; whom, more from a sense of shame than affection, he had indeed reared and educated; but with a parsimony, which plainly showed with what reluctance he did it. Joseph, however, rose superior to every obstruction the avarice of my grandfather presented, and shone unrivalled in every branch of literature.
"At college my father first became personally acquainted with him, and, struck with admiration at his amiable qualities and extraordinary abilities, soon felt that friendship he merited; and Joseph, equally pleased at the mildness of my father's demeanour, so different from the manners of Sir Horace, received and returned his friendship with an enthusiastic affection, that ended only with his life.
"In spite of every effort of reason, Joseph never came into the presence of Sir Horace, without experiencing in some degree the dread he entertained of him when a child, and which his harshness indeed justified: Sir Horace's will was an absolute law, to which he had ever yielded implicit obedience, nor was my grandfather's tyranny over him then less absolute.
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