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n exclusive fondness and attention to the children themselves, and she often warned me against falling into this error.
She therefore highly approved my intention to leave my babe under her care, and accompany Pendarves to London, where she well knew he was exposed to temptations and to dangers against which my presence might probably secure him.
"Yes: my child!" said she, as if thinking aloud, for I am sure she did not intend to grieve me, "Yes, go with your husband while you can, and have as few separate pleasures and divided hours as possible; for they lead to divided hearts. But if you have a large family you will not be able to leave home. Go therefore while you can, and while I am with you, and turn me to account while I am still here to serve you. That time I know will be short enough!"
It is not in the power of language to convey an adequate idea of the agony with which I listened to these words. Never before had my mother so pointedly alluded to her conviction that her health was decaying; and if the idea of separation from her by a happy marriage was so painful to my feelings, what must be the idea of that terrible and eternal separation?
Pendarves came in in the midst of my distress and almost fiercely demanded who had been so cruelly afflicting me, fearing, no doubt, that I had heard something concerning him, and naturally enough conceiving that no great grief could reach me, except through that or from him.
My mother gently replied, "She has been afflicting herself, foolish child! I said, unwillingly I allow, what might have prepared her for an unavoidable evil; but she chooses to fancy, poor thing! that I am not mortal: yet, see here, Seymour!" As she said this she turned up her long loose sleeves, and showed him her once fine arm fallen away comparatively to nothing!
I never saw my husband much more affected: he seized that faded arm, and, pressing it repeatedly to his lips, turned away and burst into tears--then folding us in one embrace he faltered out, "My poor Helen! Well indeed might I find you thus!" But my mother solemnly promised that she would never so afflict me again.
In the midst of this scene a letter was brought to my mother. It was from Lord Charles, and was so like the man, that I shall transcribe it.
"Madam,
"I am, madam, with the liveliest esteem, and the deepest respect, your obliged, though stricken servant, "CHARLES FIREBRAND."
"Ridiculous person!" said my mother, when she had finished the letter, giving it to me at the same time.
When I had read it, I asked her to tell us what she had said to him. "And why," said Pendarves, "does he sign himself Charles Firebrand?"
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