Thus cheated and bewildered in her last
moments by those whom she believed to be endowed with super-human
perfections, this wretched woman terminated her miserable and guilty
life.
Monthault's next care was, to discover if his apparent reformation of
manners could so far impose on the simplicity and candour of the
Beaumonts as to make them strain the principle of Christian forgiveness,
and receive him as a friend. They were still in prison, but the
Protector had given orders, that they should be provided with handsome
apartments, and every comfort compatible with confinement at the public
expence. But though Monthault took on himself the merit of this lenient
treatment, the prejudices of the whole family against him formed an
insuperable bar to his designs. His change of conduct was too pointedly
obtrusive; his piety and penance too ostentatious to pass on a man who
was thoroughly conversant with the marks of genuine repentance. Dr.
Beaumont did not approve of an elaborate and unnecessary disclosure of
the secret enormities of his early life, which seemed to him more like
the wantonness of a depraved imagination wallowing in its former
abominations, than penitence shrinking, with horror, from its
recollected transgressions.
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