may require explanation. You may admire at
my confidence: but I thank you for the manly freedom of your
acknowledgment in general.

By admiration I mean, all that may do you honour. Your bravery in coming
hither, particularly; and your greatness of mind on your taking leave of
us all. But did you not then mean to insult me?

I meant to observe to you then, as I now do in your own palace, that you
had not treated me as my heart told me I deserved to be treated: but when
I thought your warmth was rising to the uneasiness of your assembled
friends, instead of answering your question about my stay at Bologna, as
you seemed to mean it, I invited myself to an attendance upon you here,
at Naples, in such a manner as surely could not be construed as insult.

I own, Grandison, you disconcerted me. I had intended to save you that
journey.

Was that your lordship's meaning, when, in my absence, you called at my
lodgings, the day after the farewell-visit?

Not absolutely: I was uneasy with myself. I intended to talk to you.
What that talk might have produced, I know not: but had I invited you
out, if I had found you at home, would you have answered my demands?

According as you had put them.

Will you answer them now, if I attend you as far as Rome, on your return
to Florence?

If they are demands fit to be answered.

Do you expect I will make any that are not fit to be answered?

My lord, I will explain myself. You had conceived causeless prejudices
against me: you seemed inclined to impute to me a misfortune that was
not, could not be, greater to you than it was to me. I knew my own
innocence: I knew that I was rather an injured man, in having hopes given
me, in which I was disappointed, not by my own fault: whom shall an
innocent and an injured man fear?--Had I feared, my fear might have been
my destruction. For was I not in the midst of your friends? A
foreigner? If I would have avoided you, could I, had you been determined
to seek me?--I would choose to meet even an enemy as a man of honour,
rather than to avoid him as a malefactor. In my country, the law
supposes flight a confession of guilt. Had you made demands upon me that
I had not chosen to answer, I would have expostulated with you. I could
perhaps have done so as calmly as I now speak. If you would not have
been expostulated with, I would have stood upon my defence: but for the
world I would not have hurt a brother of Clementina and Jeronymo, a son
of the