Sir Charles Grandison would have stopt reading here.  He said, he could not read it to me, without such a change of voice, as would add to my pain, as well as to his own.

Tears often stole down my cheeks, when I read the letters of the bishop and Signor Jeronymo, and as Sir Charles read a part of Mrs. Beaumont’s letter:  and I doubted not but what was to follow would make them flow.  Yet, I said, Be pleased, sir, to let me read on.  I am not a stranger to distress.  I can pity others, or I should not deserve pity myself.

He pointed to the place; and withdrew to the window.

Mrs. Beaumont says, ’That the poor mother was prevailed upon to resign her child wholly to the management of Lady Sforza, and her daughter Laurana, who took her with them to their palace in Milan.

’The tender parent, however, besought them to spare all unnecessary severity; which they promised:  but Laurana objected to Camilla’s attendance.  She was thought too indulgent; and her servant Laura, as a more manageable person, was taken in her place.’  And O how cruelly, as you shall hear, did they treat her!

Father Marescotti, being obliged to visit a dying relation at Milan, was desired by the marchioness to inform himself of the way her beloved daughter was in, and of the methods taken with her, Lady Laurana having, in her letters, boasted of both.  The good Father acquainted Mrs. Beaumont with the following particulars: 

’He was surprised to find a difficulty made of his seeing the lady:  but, insisting on it, he found her to be wholly spiritless, and in terror; afraid to speak, afraid to look, before her cousin Laurana; yet seeming to want to complain to him.  He took notice of this to Laurana—­O Father, said she, we are in the right way, I assure you:  when we had her first, her chevalier, and an interview with him, were ever in her mouth; but now she is in such order, that she never speaks a word of him.  But what, asked the compassionate Father, must she have suffered, to be brought to this?—­Don’t you, Father, trouble yourself about that, replied the cruel Laurana:  the doctors have given their opinion, that some severity was necessary.  It is all for her good.

’The poor lady expressed herself to him, with earnestness, after the veil; a subject on which, it seems, they indulged her; urging, that the only way to secure her health of mind, if it could be restored, was to yield to her wishes.  Lady Sforza said, that it was not a point that she herself would press; but it was her opinion, that her family sinned in opposing a divine dedication; and, perhaps, their daughter’s malady might be a judgment upon them for it.’

The father, in his letter to Mrs. Beaumont, ascribes to Lady Sforza self-interested motives for her conduct; to Laurana, envy, on account of Lady Clementina’s superior qualities:  but nobody, he says, till now, doubted Laurana’s love of her.’

Father Marescotti then gives a shocking instance of the barbarous Laurana’s treatment of the noble sufferer—­All for her good—­Wretch! how my heart rises against her!  Her servant Laura, under pretence of confessing to her Bologna father, in tears, acquainted him with it.  It was perpetrated but the day before.