ABSTRACT
The unhappy Gabrielle, immured almost always in her solitary chamber, worn out, and nearly heart-broken with ceaseless suffering and disappointment, felt that with her intellectual energy so long upheld, (but now rapidly sinking) her physical strength was decaying likewise, and that long thus she could not continue to exist. The few who, attracted by her singular worth and merits, had made it a point to call themselves her friends, captivated more by the desire of appearing liberal and high minded than from any real admiration they were capable of feeling, she had from the humiliating dereliction of Angelo refused to see, for they had been his friends before they had professed themselves hers; and her genuine sense of delicacy and honour shrunk from the impropriety of hearing animadversions passed upon him on her account, or from the contemptible meanness of seeking to inspire pity by the gentle resignation with which she endured insults, that she could have wished unknown for ever to any but herself.
