such love as you seemed to feel for me, I should have
_feared_ what I _now know_. From the moment when, in
accidental conversation, I heard that in defiance of my
advice, you had spent the day alone with Henry, to that in
which I received anonymously the notes I now send you, the
truth was gradually disclosed to me. I saw you change colour;
I saw your lip quiver, and heard your voice tremble. I saw you
in ungovernable passion upbraid the man who you fancied had
betrayed you, and then, in the excess of your agitation, you
fainted at my feet. When I went to your bedside, and gazed on
your pale face, with the faint hope that I had been mistaken,
that I had not read right your uncontrollable agitation--even
then your lips opened and uttered a passionate adjuration to
Henry, not to leave or forsake you, which drove me from your
side with thoughts and feelings that time and prayer alone can
subdue. When, on the following day, in a cover, directed by an
unknown hand, I received the confirmation of what was already
too sure, in the first agony of grief and indignation, I
resolved to part from you for ever; and it was not till I had
gone through the severest struggles with myself, that I came
to my present determination. The summons I received a few
hours afterwards to your uncle's death-bed, confirmed it. I
would not carry to his dying ears the intelligence of your
guilt, and of its results; nor would I load my conscience with
promises which, had I discarded you, could never have been
fulfilled. You have not yet been criminal save in thought and
in heart; you have sworn it, and I believe you. God have mercy
upon you, if in this too you have deceived me; but if you are
not perjured--if you have not called upon God Almighty to
witness a lie--then kneel to Him each day of your life, and
bless Him that he has saved you. And now listen to the
commands I lay upon you, and obey them strictly, as you
value--what shall I say? What have you ever valued? What have
you ever respected? You have profaned the most sacred
feelings--the holiest emotions of our nature; and I know not by
what tie, by what hope, or by what fear to adjure you. If you
would not become a mark for the finger of scorn to point at; if
you would not die of a broken heart, or live with a hardened
one; if you have any horror of the lowest depths of vice, or
any lingering sense of duty, weigh the importance of this
moment of your life, and throw not away this last hope o