ing the same game with him as with
me--that he breakfasted first, and enjoyed an hour of her society, and
then I took my turn, so that we never jostled; and this explained why,
when he came back sometimes and passed my door, as she was sitting in my
lap, she coloured violently, thinking if her lover looked in, what a
denouement there would be. He could not help again and again
expressing his astonishment at finding that our intimacy had continued
unimpaired up to so late a period after he came, and when they were on
the most intimate footing. She used to deny positively to him that
there was anything between us, just as she used to assure me with
impenetrable effrontery that "Mr. C---- was nothing to her, but merely a
lodger." All this while she kept up the farce of her romantic
attachment to her old lover, vowed that she never could alter in that
respect, let me go to Scotland on the solemn and repeated assurance that
there was no new flame, that there was no bar between us but this
shadowy love--I leave her on this understanding, she becomes more fond
or more intimate with her new lover; he quitting the house (whether
tired out or not, I can't say)--in revenge she ceases to write to me,
keeps me in wretched suspense, treats me like something loathsome to her
when I return to enquire the cause, denies it with scorn and impudence,
destroys me and shews no pity, no desire to soothe or shorten the pangs
she has occasioned by her wantonness and hypocrisy, and wishes to linger
the affair on to the last moment, going out to keep an appointment with
another while she pretends to be obliging me in the tenderest point
(which C---- himself said was too much). . . .What do you think of all
this? Shall I tell you my opinion? But I must try to do it in another
letter.

TO THE SAME

(In conclusion)

I did not sleep a wink all that night; nor did I know till the next day
the full meaning of what had happened to me. With the morning's light,
conviction glared in upon me that I had not only lost her for ever--but
every feeling I had ever had towards her--respect, tenderness, pity--all
but my fatal passion, was gone. The whole was a mockery, a frightful
illusion. I had embraced the false Florimel instead of the true; or was
like the man in the Arabian Nights who had married a GOUL. How
different was the idea I once had of her? Was this she,

--"Who had been beguiled--she who was made
Within a gentle bosom