ABSTRACT
A very few hours reflection served to reconcile D’Alonville to the fate of a man, who, though his brother, had so few claims to his regret. It was by the conduct of Du Bosse that the last moments of the Viscount de Fayolles had been imbittered, if not accelerated; and when D’Alonville recalled to his memory the dying words of his father, it seemed as if the punishment of heaven had justly fallen on the ungrateful and unfeeling son. Another consideration would have reconciled to most men of D’Alonville’s age, the loss of a much more valuable relation than he could ever have found in Du Bosse – this was the circumstance of being his heir, not only to the whole of those extensive possessions in France, but to the property with which Du Bosse had entrusted him, with a view of securing it in England as a resource against the storm which he saw gathering, but which had burst upon him the sooner for those precautions. The estates of his family he hoped one day to regain; and the possibility of laying them at the feet of Angelina, brought, whilst he reflected on it, a thousand delicious visions of future happiness. – This, however, was barely a possibility. But what he had saved from the wreck of his family’s personal property, and which was now undoubtedly his own, secured him against the immediate indigence to which so many of his countrymen were exposed; and it released him from the apprehension of being burthensome to his friends – from the humiliation of dependence, and its insupportable consequence, contempt.
