one's backers, though I shall
never be in the wrestling ring again.'

'That is a good decision--when you feel quite yourself, dear Tony,' Emma
replied.

'I dare say I have disgraced my sex, but not as they suppose. I feel my
new self already, and can make the poor brute go through fire on behalf
of the old. What is the task?--merely to drive a face!'

'It is not known.'

'It will be known.'

'But this is a sealed secret.'

'Nothing is a secret that has been spoken. It 's in the air, and I have
to breathe to live by it. And I would rather it were out. "She betrayed
him." Rather that, than have them think--anything! They will exclaim, How
could she! I have been unable to answer it to you--my own heart. How? Oh!
our weakness is the swiftest dog to hunt us; we cannot escape it. But I
have the answer for them, that I trust with my whole soul none of them
would have done the like.'

'None, my Tony, would have taken it to the soul as you do.'

'I talk, dear. If I took it honestly, I should be dumb, soon dust. The
moment we begin to speak, the guilty creature is running for cover. She
could not otherwise exist. I am sensible of evasion when I open my lips.'

'But Tony has told me all.'

'I think I have. But if you excuse my conduct, I am certain I have not.'

'Dear girl, accounting for it, is not the same as excusing.'

'Who can account for it! I was caught in a whirl--Oh! nothing
supernatural: my weakness; which it pleases me to call a madness--shift
the ninety-ninth! When I drove down that night to Mr. Tonans, I am
certain I had my clear wits, but I felt like a bolt. I saw things, but at
too swift a rate for the conscience of them. Ah! let never Necessity draw
the bow of our weakness: it is the soul that is winged to its perdition.
I remember I was writing a story, named THE MAN OF TWO MINDS. I shall
sign it, By the Woman of Two Natures. If ever it is finished. Capacity
for thinking should precede the act of writing. It should; I do not say
that it does. Capacity for assimilating the public taste and reproducing
it, is the commonest. The stuff is perishable, but it pays us for our
labour, and in so doing saves us from becoming tricksters. Now I can see
that Mr. Redworth had it in that big head of his--the authoress outliving
her income!'

'He dared not speak.'

'Why did he not dare?'

'Would it have checked you?'

'I was a shot out of a gun, and I am glad he did not stand in my way.
What power charged th