They might
perhaps instruct her daughter, and shield her from the misery,
the tyranny, her mother knew not how to avoid.
This thought gave life to her diction, her soul flowed into
it, and she soon found the task of recollecting almost obliterated
impressions very interesting. She lived again in the revived
emotions of youth, and forgot her present in the retrospect of
sorrows that had assumed an unalterable character.
Though this employment lightened the weight of time, yet,
never losing sight of her main object, Maria did not allow any
opportunity to slip of winning on the affections of Jemima; for
she discovered in her a strength of mind, that excited her esteem,
clouded as it was by the misanthropy of despair.
An insulated being, from the misfortune of her birth, she
despised and preyed on the society by which she had been oppressed,
and loved not her fellow-creatures, because she had never been
beloved. No mother had ever fondled her, no father or brother had
protected her from outrage; and the man who had plunged her into
infamy, and deserted her when she stood in greatest need of support,
deigned not to smooth with kindness the road to ruin.
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