that I had myself just been trampling on the
established boundaries of obligation, and therefore might well have a
fellow-feeling for other offenders. Add to which, I had known Mr.
Falkland from the first as a beneficent divinity. I had observed at
leisure, and with a minuteness which could not deceive me, the excellent
qualities of his heart; and I found him possessed of a mind beyond
comparison the most fertile and accomplished I had ever known.

But though the terrors which had impressed me were considerably
alleviated, my situation was notwithstanding sufficiently miserable. The
ease and light-heartedness of my youth were for ever gone. The voice of
an irresistible necessity had commanded me to "sleep no more." I was
tormented with a secret, of which I must never disburthen myself; and
this consciousness was, at my age, a source of perpetual melancholy. I
had made myself a prisoner, in the most intolerable sense of that term,
for years--perhaps for the rest of my life. Though my prudence and
discretion should be invariable, I must remember that I should have an
overseer, vigilant from conscious guilt, full of resentment at the
unjustifiable means by which I had extorted from him a confession, and
whose lightest caprice might at any time decide upon every thing that
was dear to me. The vigilance even of a public and systematical
despotism is poor, compared with a vigilance which is thus goaded by the
most anxious passions of the soul. Against this species of persecution I
knew not how to invent a refuge. I dared neither fly from the
observation of Mr. Falkland, nor continue exposed to its operation. I
was at first indeed lulled in a certain degree to security upon the
verge of the precipice. But it was not long before I found a thousand
circumstances perpetually reminding me of my true situation. Those I am
now to relate are among the most memorable.

CHAPTER VII.

In no long time after the disclosure Mr. Falkland had made, Mr.
Forester, his elder brother by the mother's side, came to reside for a
short period in our family. This was a circumstance peculiarly adverse
to my patron's habits and inclinations. He had broken off, as I have
already said, all intercourse of visiting with his neighbours. He
debarred himself every kind of amusement and relaxation. He shrunk from
the society of his fellows, and thought he could never be sufficiently
buried in obscurity and solitude. This principle was, in most cases,