In almost the same moment,
Thaddeus reflected on his strange meeting with the countess; the
melancholy story; her forlorn death-bed; the fatal secret that her
vile husband and son were his father and brother; and that her
daughter, whom his warm heart acknowledged as a sister, was with him
under the same roof, and, like him, the innocent inheritor of her
father's shame.
Whilst these multifarious and painful meditations were agitating his
perturbed mind, Dr. Cavendish found repose on a couch; and Pembroke
Somerset, resolving once more to try the influence of entreaty on the
hitherto generous spirit of his father, with mingled hope and
despondence commenced a last attempt to shake his fatal resolution,
in the following letter:
"TO SIR ROBERT SOMERSET, BART, SOMERSET CASTLE.
"I have not ventured into the presence of my dear father since he
uttered the dreadful words which I would give my existence to believe
I had never heard. You denounced a curse upon me if I opposed your
will to have me break all connection with the man who preserved my
life! When I think on this, when I remember that it was from
_you_ I received a command so inexplicable from one of your
character, so disgraceful to mine, I am almost mad; and what I shall
be should you, by repeating your injunctions, force me to obey them,
Heaven only knows! but I am certain that I cannot survive the loss of
my honor; I cannot survive the sacrifice of all my principles of
virtue which such conduct must forever destroy.
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