the fruit of all this toil and all this meditation. I am determined
to scrape acquaintance with Haller and Linnaeus. I will begin this very
day. All one's friends, you know, should be ours. Love has made many a
patient, and let me see if it cannot, in my case, make a physician. But,
first, what is all this writing about?"

"Mrs. Wentworth has put me upon a strange task,--not disagreeable,
however, but such as I should, perhaps, have declined, had not the
absence of my Bess, and her mamma, made the time hang somewhat heavy. I
have, oftener than once, and far more circumstantially than now, told
her my adventures, but she is not satisfied. She wants a written
narrative, for some purpose which she tells me she will disclose to me
hereafter.

"Luckily, my friend Stevens has saved me more than half the trouble. He
has done me the favour to compile much of my history with his own hand.
I cannot imagine what could prompt him to so wearisome an undertaking;
but he says that adventures and a destiny so singular as mine ought not
to be abandoned to forgetfulness like any vulgar and _every-day_
existence. Besides, when he wrote it, he suspected that it might be
necessary to the safety of my reputation and my life, from the
consequences of my connection with Welbeck. Time has annihilated that
danger. All enmities and all suspicions are buried with that ill-fated
wretch. Wortley has been won by my behaviour, and confides in my
integrity now as much as he formerly suspected it. I am glad, however,
that the task was performed. It has saved me a world of writing. I had
only to take up the broken thread, and bring it down to the period of my
present happiness; and this was done, just as you tripped along the
entry this morning.

"To bed, my friend; it is late, and this delicate frame is not half so
able to encounter fatigue as a youth spent in the hay-field and the
dairy might have been expected to be."

"I will, but let me take these sheets along with me. I will read them,
that I am determined, before I sleep, and watch if you have told the
whole truth."

"Do so, if you please; but remember one thing. Mrs. Wentworth requested
me to write not as if it were designed for her perusal, but for those
who have no previous knowledge of her or of me. 'Twas an odd request. I
cannot imagine what she means by it; but she never acts without good
reason, and I have done so. And now, withdraw, my dear, and farewell."

CHAPTER XLVI.