Such now was their resumed sway with Munro. While his niece--the young,
the beautiful, the virtuous--so endowed by nature--so improved by
education--so full of those fine graces, beyond the reach of any
art--lay before him insensible--her fine mind spent in incoherent
ravings--her gentle form racked with convulsive shudderings--the still,
small, monitorial voice, unheard so long, spoke out to him in terrible
rebukings. He felt in those moments how deeply he had been a criminal;
how much, not of his own, he had appropriated to himself and sacrificed;
and how sacred a trust he had abused, in the person of the delicate
creature before him, by a determination the most cruel and perhaps
unnecessary.
Days had elapsed in her delirium; and such were his newly-awakened
feelings, that each night brought him, though at considerable risk, an
attendant by her bed. His hand administered--his eyes watched over; and,
in the new duties of the parent, he acquired a new feeling of duty and
domestic love, the pleasures of which he had never felt before.
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