pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. The following paper is written in a female hand, and was no doubt communicated to my much-regretted friend by the lady whose early history it serves to illustrate, the Countess D— — . She is no more— she long since died, a childless and a widowed wife, and, as her letter sadly predicts, none survive to whom the publication of this narrative can prove 'injurious, or even painful. ' Strange! two powerful and wealthy families, that in which she was born, and that into which she had married, have ceased to be— they are utterly extinct.