I am able to rattle up to the old mark. At present, I feel
like a wrestler who has had a fall. As soon as the stiffness is over,
it's best to make an appearance, for the sake of 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!