ROSE BRADSHAW:

OR THE CURATE OF ST MARK'S.

PART II.

'O, it is monstrous ! monstrous !

Methought the billows spoke and told me of it.'

Tempest.

SCARCELY had the remains of Mrs Bradshaw been committed to the tomb, before the work of reform, as he termed it, was commenced in Mr Lacy's domestic economy. The first step towards it, was taking the daughter of his laundress into his house, not only as his mistress, but to rule and govern the establishment.

Catherine Sutton was a very beautiful girl whom he had seduced from the path of virtue a short time before his acquaintance with Rose. She had borne him a son, and this was the reason he assigned for his conduct. She was as unprincipled as handsome, and her mother, who also lived at the King's Arms, was a most unworthy wretch, worse even than herself. The death of Mrs Bradshaw had been a dreadful blow to Rose, and the discovery of this fresh act of baseness on the part of her husband, was an additional shock to her injured feelings. She sunk upon the bed

of sickness, and Mrs Sutton, the laundress, was appointed to the office of her nurse, and immediately removed her, helpless as she was, to a remote apartment in the back part of the hotel, under the pretence of having more air; for it was very warm weather.

· Rose was naturally mild, but if she had not been so, was now too ill to make any resistance. She was treated with the most cruel neglect and contumely by the demons who attended her, Catherine Sutton and her vile mother, but, though no physician had been sent for, to the surprise and disappointment of Lacy and his coadjutors, she slowly recovered. He had now cogent reasons for wishing Rose would depart this life; for having abandoned himself to every species of excess, he found that his pecuniary affairs were in a dreadful state of embarrassment, and he wished to obtain his wife's property, which had been so secured from him that even she could bestow but a small part of it upon him. But after her death it would come to him by heirship, and he talked this affair over with the two wretches, Catherine Sutton and her mother. They concerted a scheme to get rid of the hapless Rose. Mrs Sutton, feeling extremely anxious to see her daughter 'made an honest woman,' to use her own expression, by becoming the wife of Lacy, who had artfully said that when Mrs Lacy was no more, he intended to marry Catherine, resolved to accelerate the death of the unfortunate Rose by giving her a dose of laudanum. Lacy made no objections, and these barbarians repaired to her prison, for such it literally was, as the door was kept locked- and her

friends denied admission to her, because, as they said, she was too ill to admit them. They first tried by stratagem to induce her to take their potion, but their cruel usage of her had sharpened the wits of the poor young creature, and she would not touch it. Finding this was the case, they used force. Hapless Rose! the image of her mother and the amiable Henry Rossmore, arose to her recollection and she called aloud on them to save her.

'Father of Light, and God of all Mercies, save, and protect me from these monsters!'

Alas! poor Rose, who can save thee from the fangs of the cruel spoiler, placed, as thou art, far beyond the reach of human sight and hearing? Vain are thy

struggles and thy cries; God alone can protect thee.

Thinking at length it was the will of Heaven that she should suffer for her disobedience to her mother and the counsel of the good Curate, and seeing there was no alternative, she swallowed the laudanum ; but so much of it was lost in the natural struggle for life, which clings to our nature even under the most adverse circumstances, that its effects were not so rapid as they wished.

Finding that a stupor was rapidly overwhelming her senses, she said, 'Forgive me, sainted mother, for my disobedience to thy will; plead for me at the throne of grace, and Oh! dear Henry Rossmore, pardon and pray for the ungrateful Rose Bradshaw.'

Her voice grew more feeble, and sighing out, 'Oh! Lord, forgive me my sins, into thy hands I commit my

spirit,' she closed her eyes upon the world and all its

troubles.

Thus, in her nineteenth year, was the lovely, spotless Rose, the flower whose sweetness the amiable Curate of St Marks would have cherished with the most watchful tenderness, but which in the height of its bloom and beauty was withered by the hand of the cruel spoiler, hurried by violence to an untimely grave.

The body of the unfortunate Rose was hastily wrapped in a winding sheet, a ready made coffin obtained at an undertaker's, and before her vital warmth had departed, she was committed to the family tomb of Lacy, beneath the church of St Mark's. The service for the dead was performed by the Rector late in the afternoon of a warm day in August, in the presence of the Curate, who, as the solemn event was unknown to Rose's friends, was the only real mourner present.

After the funeral was over, the guilty wretches had time to reflect upon their crime, and Lacy felt as if it would be some relief to his burthened conscience to leave the scene of the late infamous transaction. That very night he left Dublin, and accompanied by Catherine Sutton and her mother, made a tour to the Lakes of Killarney. On the way back he married her as he promised, not from any regard to her, but because, being an accomplice in his guilt, he feared to provoke her and her mother's malice, who, he knew, would sooner suffer destruction themselves than let him

escape.