ill. Do keep your horrid fancies to yourself, or keep away till you are

cured of the vapours--I dare say it is your dismal face that makes me dream so unpleasantly.'

Laura, however, was not to be so discouraged. She took occasion to represent that no harm could ensue from preparing to meet the foe; since his march was not to be retarded by shutting our eyes on his advances, nor hastened by the daring which watched his approach. She at length thought she had succeeded in convincing her aunt of her danger. Lady Pelham _said_ that she feared she was dying, and she believed that she said the truth. But Lady Pelham had had sixty years practice in self-deceit. The fear might flutter in her imagination, but was not strong enough to touch her heart. Laura, however, made use of her acknowledgement to press upon her the duties of forgiveness and charity towards all mindkind, and especially towards her child; reminding her of the affecting parity of situation between offending man and his disobedient offspring. Lady Pelham at first answered impatiently that she would not be argued on this subject; but as her spirits began to fail under the first confinement which she had ever endured, she became more tractable. 'God knows,' said she to Laura, one day, 'we all have much need to be forgiven; and therefore we must forgive in our turn. For my part I am sure I die in charity with all mankind, and with that creature among the rest. However, I shall take my friend the Spectator's advice, and remember the difference between giving and _for_giving.'

Laura often begged permission to send for Mrs Herbert; but Lady Pelham sometimes postponed it till she should get better, sometimes till she should grow worse. Laura was in the meantime her constant attendant; bearing with her peevishness, soothing her caprice, and striving to rouse in her feelings suitable to her condition. Finding, however, that she made but little progress in her pious work, she begged that she might be allowed to take the assistance of a clergyman. 'A clergyman, child!' cried Lady Pelham. 'Do you imagine me to be a papist? Or do you think me capable of such weak superstitution as to place more reliance on a parson's prayers than on yours, or my maid Betty's? No, no! I trust I have been no worse than other people; and I hope, though I may be weak, I shall never be fanatical. Besides, I have too high a sense of the Divine Justice to think that our Maker would first give us ungovernable passions, and then punish us for yielding to them. A phlegmatic being like you, may indeed be called to strict account; but people of strong feelings must be judged by a different standard.' 'Oh, Madam,' said Laura, 'be assured that our Maker gives us no unconquerable passions. If we ourselves have made them so, it becomes us to be humbled in the dust, not to glory in the presumptuous hope that He will soften the sanctions of his law to favour our remissness.'

Driven from the strong hold of justice, rather by the increase of her bodily languor, than by the force of truth, the dying sinner had recourse to mercy,--a mercy, however, of her own composing. 'It is true,' said she one day to Laura, 'that I have done some things which I have reason to regret, and which, I must confess, deserve punishment. But Divine Mercy towards believers, we are told, is infinite; and though I may at times have doubted, I have never disbelieved.' Laura, shuddering at this awful blindness, was striving to frame a useful reply, when she saw her aunt's countenance change. It was distorted by a momentary convulsion, and then fixed for ever in the stillness of death.