elicate health, to
absent myself from my duties for months and months together, and
to follow my favorite botanical pursuits just as I pleased. When,
therefore, he wrote me word that great part of his property, and great
part, consequently, of my sisters' fortunes, depended on my going to
Germany (his own health not permitting him to take the journey), I had
no choice but to place myself at his disposal immediately.

"I went away, being assured beforehand that my absence would not last
more than three or four months at the most.

"While I was abroad, I wrote to your sister constantly. I had treated
her dishonorably and wickedly, but no thought of abandoning her had ever
entered my heart: my dearest hope, at that time, was the hope of seeing
her again. Not one of my letters was answered. I was detained in Germany
beyond the time during which I had consented to remain there; and in
the excess of my anxiety, I even ventured to write twice to your father.
Those letters also remained unanswered. When I at last got back to
England, I immediately sent a person on whom I could rely to Dibbledean,
to make the inquiries which I dreaded to make myself. My messenger was
turned from your doors, with the fearful news of your sister's flight
from home and of her death.

"It was then I first suspected that my letters had been tampered with.
It was then, too, when the violence of my grief and despair had a little
abated, that the news of your sister's flight inspired me, for the
first time, with a suspicion of the consequence which had followed
the commission of my sin. You may think it strange that this suspicion
should not have occurred to me before. It would seem so no longer,
perhaps, if I detailed to you the peculiar system of home education, by
which my father, strictly and conscientiously, endeavored to preserve
me--as other young men are not usually preserved--from the moral
contaminations of the world. But it would be useless to dwell on this
now. No explanations can alter the events of the guilty and miserable
past.

"Anxiously--though privately, and in fear and trembling--I caused such
inquiries to be made as I hoped might decide the question whether
the child existed or not. They were long persevered in, but they were
useless--useless, perhaps, as I now think with bitter sorrow, because
I trusted them to others, and had not the courage to make them openly
myself.

"Two years after that time I married, under circumstanc