OR,

THE OFFICER'S WIFE AND HER SISTER.

A NOVEL

BY

MRS. BRIDGET BLUEMANTLE,

AUTHOR OF

THE HUSBAND And wife, three OLD MAIDS, &c. &c.

Excuse

A woman's frailty; where she once has lov'd,
Strong is the passion; and howe'er suppressed
In smothering embers, still the flame bursts out,
And strives to climb above our just resentment.

VOL. I.

FROWDE.

PHILADELPHIA :

PUBLISHED BY M. CAREY, NO. 121, CHESNUT-STEET,

AND FOR SALE BY WELLS AND LILLY, BOSTON.

MONTE VIDEO.

CHAP. I.

Hark! how it floats on the dewy air!
Oh what a dying, dying pause was there!
'Tis harmony from yon sequester'd bow'r;
Sweet harmony, that sooths the midnight hour!
Long ere the charioteer of day had run
His morning course, th' enchantment had begun;
And he shall gild yon mountain's height again,
Ere yet the pleasing toil becomes a pain.

COWPER.

HIGH on a cliff, whose beetling brow overlooked the ocean, in a remote part of the principality of Wales, stood the Castle of Landrenden, the residence of Mortimer Mountstewart, the last surviving heir of an ancient and honourable family, whom early misfortunes had induced to abandon the world, and seclude himself, with his two daughters, Constance and Eleanora, from all society, devoting himself entirely to their education, and holding no con1

VOL. I.

verse with the surrounding gentry, who regarding him as a gloomy misanthrope, made no effort to withdraw him from his seclusion.

The character of Mountstewart was rather extraordinary-high wrought, full of sensibility, with an extravagant sense of honour, a vast fund of literary acquirements, and enthusiastic love of poetry, and a heart tremblingly alive to every fond affection: his two daughters formed alike the happiness and misery of his life: he looked up to them as the coheiresses of an ancient family, and a large estate, as beings created in a fairer mould than the rest of the human species; and he trembled with apprehensive tenderness at the recollection of the early periods of his own life, and prayed Heaven to avert from his darlings, those sorrows which had bowed him to the earth, and prematured old age, ere half the probable term of his existence had been accomplished. That energy of feeling which had been by various circumstances thrown back upon the fountain from whence it flowed, would assuredly have precipitated him to some deed of desperation, had not the early impression of religion, which his excellent mother had instilled and cultivated in his heart, guarded him in the hour of trial, and with angelic influence," whipped the offending Adam out of him." He by degrees became resigned to his unhappy destiny, and renouncing for ever a world where he had been so eminently wretched, he retired into the country with his two infant daughters, then only two years of age, to mourn in solitude over the memory of past joys; to cherish the image of her he had