The penetrating Laura observed
my behaviour; but nothing further occurred to excite her attention to it
at that time; and, concluding from my manner that enquiry would be
painful to me, she humanely suppressed her curiosity.
I afterwards found that Mr. Falkland had been known to the father of
Laura; that he had been acquainted with the story of Count Malvesi, and
with a number of other transactions redounding in the highest degree to
the credit of the gallant Englishman. The Neapolitan had left letters in
which these transactions were recorded, and which spoke of Mr. Falkland
in the highest terms of panegyric. Laura had been used to regard every
little relic of her father with a sort of religious veneration; and, by
this accident, the name of Mr. Falkland was connected in her mind with
the sentiments of unbounded esteem.
The scene by which I was surrounded was perhaps more grateful to me,
than it would have been to most other persons with my degree of
intellectual cultivation. Sore with persecution and distress, and
bleeding at almost every vein, there was nothing I so much coveted as
rest and tranquillity.
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