home, then,” he added with a deep sigh— 

 At the mention of her return home, all the melancholy circumstances, that must attend this return, rushed upon her fancy; she burst into convulsive grief, and St. Aubert himself, affected beyond the resistance of the fortitude which he had, at first, summoned, wept with her. After some moments, he composed himself. “My dear child,” said he, “be comforted. When I am gone, you will not be forsaken—I leave you only in the more immediate care of that Providence, which has never yet forsaken me. Do not afflict me with this excess of grief; rather teach me by your example to bear my own.” He stopped again, and Emily, the more she endeavoured to restrain her emotion, found it the less possible to do so. 

 St. Aubert, who now spoke with pain, resumed the subject. “That closet, my dear,—when you return home, go to it; and, beneath the board I have described, you will find a packet of written papers. Attend to me now, for the promise you have given particularly relates to what I shall direct. These papers you must burn—and, solemnly I command you, without examining them.” 

 Emily’s surprise, for a moment, overcame her grief, and she ventured to ask, why this must be? St. Aubert replied, that, if it had been right for him to explain his reasons, her late promise would have been unnecessarily exacted. “It is sufficient for you, my love, to have a deep sense of the importance of observing me in this instance.” St. Aubert proceeded. “Under that board you will also find about two hundred louis d’ors, wrapped in a silk purse; indeed, it was to secure whatever money might be in the château, that this secret place was contrived, at a time when the province was over-run by troops of men, who took advantage of the tumults, and became plunderers. 

 “But I have yet another promise to receive from you, which is—that you will never, whatever may be your future circumstances, sell the château.” St. Aubert even enjoined her, whenever she might marry, to make it an article in the contract, that the château should always be hers. He then gave her a more minute account of his present circumstances than he had yet done, adding, “The two hundred louis, with what money you will now find in my purse, is all the ready money I have to leave you. I have told you how I am circumstanced with M. Motteville, at Paris. Ah, my child! I leave you poor—but not destitute,” he added, after a long pause. Emily could make no reply to anything he now said, but knelt at the bedside, with her face upon the quilt, weeping over the hand she held there. 

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