 I thank you for it. Yet, what could have been easier, than to repeat so plain and so simple a tale? The vague hints, you had before given, I had repeatedly declared to be insufficient. Remember, all my earnestness, and all my simplicity, and learn the value of sincerity! "Oh! with what difficulty is an active mind, once forced into any particular train, persuaded to desert it as hopeless!"12

'This recital, then, was not to be confirmed, till the whole moral conformation of my mind was affected—till the barbed arrow had fixed, and rankled in, and poisoned, with its envenomed point, every vein, every fibre, of my heart. This, I confess, is now the case—Reason and self-respect sustain me—but the wound you have inflicted is indelible—it will continue to be the corroding canker at the root of my peace. My youth has been worn in anguish—and the summer of life will probably be overshadowed by a still thicker and darker cloud. But I mean not to reproach you—it is not given me to contribute to your happiness—the dearest and most ardent wish of my soul—I would not then inflict unnecessary pain—yet, I would fix upon your mind, the value of unequivocal sincerity.

'Had the happiness of any human being, the meanest, the vilest, depended as much upon me, as mine has done on you, I would have sacrificed, for their relief, the dearest secret of my heart—the secret, even upon which my very existence had depended. It is true, you did not directly deceive me—but is that enough for the delicacy of humanity? May the past be an affecting lesson to us both—it is written upon my mind in characters of blood. I feel, and acknowledge, my own errors, in yielding to the illusion of vague, visionary, expectation; but my faults have originated in a generous source—they have been the wild, ardent, fervent, excesses, of a vigorous and an exalted mind!

'I checked my tears, as they flowed, and they are already dried—uncalled, unwished, for—why do they, thus, struggle to force their way? my mind has, I hope, too much energy, utterly to sink—I know what it is to suffer, and to combat with, if not to subdue, my feelings—and certainty, itself, is some relief. I am, also, supported by the retrospect of my conduct; with all its mistakes, and all its extravagances, it has been that of a virtuous, ingenuous, uncorrupted, mind. You have contemned a heart of no common value
