prolong, by hypocrisy
or silence, his misery as well as my own? Why not deal with him
explicitly, and assure him of the truth?

You will hardly believe that, in obedience to this suggestion, I rose
for the purpose of ordering a light, that I might instantly make this
confession in a letter. A second thought shewed me the rashness of this
scheme, and I wondered by what infirmity of mind I could be betrayed
into a momentary approbation of it. I saw with the utmost clearness that
a confession like that would be the most remediless and unpardonable
outrage upon the dignity of my sex, and utterly unworthy of that passion
which controuled me.

I resumed my seat and my musing. To account for the absence of Pleyel
became once more the scope of my conjectures. How many incidents might
occur to raise an insuperable impediment in his way? When I was a child,
a scheme of pleasure, in which he and his sister were parties, had been,
in like manner, frustrated by his absence; but his absence, in that
instance, had been occasioned by his falling from a boat into the river,
in consequence of which he had run the most imminent hazard of being
drowned. Here was a second disappointment endured by the same persons,
and produced by his failure. Might it not originate in the same cause?
Had he not designed to cross the river that morning to make some
necessary purchases in Jersey? He had preconcerted to return to his
own house to dinner; but, perhaps, some disaster had befallen him.
Experience had taught me the insecurity of a canoe, and that was the
only kind of boat which Pleyel used: I was, likewise, actuated by
an hereditary dread of water. These circumstances combined to bestow
considerable plausibility on this conjecture; but the consternation
with which I began to be seized was allayed by reflecting, that if
this disaster had happened my brother would have received the speediest
information of it. The consolation which this idea imparted was ravished
from me by a new thought. This disaster might have happened, and his
family not be apprized of it. The first intelligence of his fate may
be communicated by the livid corpse which the tide may cast, many days
hence, upon the shore.

Thus was I distressed by opposite conjectures: thus was I tormented by
phantoms of my own creation. It was not always thus. I can ascertain the
date when my mind became the victim of this imbecility; perhaps it was
coeval with the inroad of a fatal passion;