All works (Audiobook) by Elizabeth Inchbald

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Running time: 10 hr 5 min

The unabridged classic on MP3 audio, narrated by Anais 9000. Three playback speeds on one disk; etext edition included. Running time: 10.1 hours (slow), 9.2 hours (medium), 8.4 hours (fast).

CHAPTER I

Dorriforth, bred at St. Omer's in all the scholastic rigour of that college, was by education, and the solemn vows of his order, a Roman Catholic priest--but nicely discriminating between the philosophical and the superstitious part of that character, and adopting the former only, he possessed qualities not unworthy the first professors of Christianity--every virtue which it was his vocation to preach, it was his care to practise; nor was he in the class of those of the religious, who, by secluding themselves from the world, fly the merit they might have in reforming mankind. He refused to shelter himself from the temptations of the layman by the walls of a cloister, but sought for, and found that shelter in the centre of London, where he dwelt, in his own prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.

He was about thirty, and had lived in the metropolis near five years, when a gentleman, above his own age, but with whom he had from his youth contracted a most sincere friendship, died, and left him the sole guardian of his daughter, a young lady of eighteen.

The deceased Mr. Milner, on his approaching dissolution, perfectly sensible of his state, thus reasoned to himself before he made the nomination: "I have formed no intimate friendship during my whole life, except one --I can be said to know the heart of no man except the heart of Dorriforth --After knowing his, I never sought acquaintance with another--I did not wish to lessen the exalted estimation of human nature he had inspired. In this moment of trembling apprehension from every thought that darts across my mind, much more for every action which soon I must be called to answer for; all worldly views here thrown aside, I act as if that tribunal before which I every moment expect to appear, were now sitting in judgment upon my purpose.--The care of an only child is the great charge that in this tremendous crisis I have to execute --these earthly affections that bind me to her by custom, sympathy, or what I fondly call parental love, would direct me to study her present happiness, and leave her to the care of some of those she styles her dearest friends; but they are friends only in the sunshine of fortune; in the cold nipping frost of disappointment, sickness, or connubial strife, they will forsake the house of care, although the house which they themselves may have built."

Here the excruciating anguish of the father, overcame that of the dying man.

"In the moment of desertion," continued he, "which I now picture to myself, where will my child find comfort? --That heavenly aid religion gives, which now amidst these agonizing tortures, chears with the bright ray of consolation my frightened soul; that, she will be denied."

It is in this place proper to remark, that Mr. Milner was a member of the church of Rome, but on his marriage with a lady of Protestant tenets, they mutually agreed their sons should be educated in the religious opinion of their father, and their daughters in that of their mother. One child only was the result of their union, the child whose future welfare now occupied the thoughts of her expiring father-- from him the care of her education had been withheld, as he kept inviolate late the promise made to her departed mother on the article of religion, and therefore consigned his daughter to a Protestantboarding-school, from whence she was sent with merely such sentiments of religion, as young ladies of fashion mostly imbibe. Her little heart employed in all the endless pursuits of personal accomplishments, had left her mind without one ornament, except those which nature gave, and even they were not wholly preserved from the ravages made by its rival, Art.

While her father was in health he beheld with the extreme of delight, his accomplished daughter without one fault with which taste or elegance could have reproached her, nor ever enquired what might be her other failings-- Cast on a bed of sickness, and upon the point of leaving her to her future fate those failings at once rushed on his memory --and all the pride, the fond enjoyment he had taken in beholding her open the ball, or delight her hearers with her sprightly wit, escaped his remembrance; or not escaping, were thought of with a sigh of contrition, or at best a contemptuous frown, at the frivolous qualification.

"Something more essential," said he to himself, "must be considered-- something to prepare her for an hour like this I now experience--can I then leave her to the charge of those who themselves never remember such an hour will come?--Dorriforth is the only person I know, who, uniting every moral virtue to those of religion, and native honour to pious faith; will protect without controuling, instruct without tyrannizing, comfort without flattering, and perhaps in time make good by choice rather than by constraint, the dear object of his dying friend's sole care."

Dorriforth, who came post from London to visit Mr. Milner in his illness, received a few moments before his death all his injunctions, and promised to fulfil them--but in this last [...]