"Nay," said she, in some little trepidation, "if you have any thing to communicate, I am already prepared to receive it."
"Indeed, Miss Jessup, I have something to communicate. A man of more refinement and address than I can pretend to would make this communication in a more circuitous and artful manner; and a man less deeply interested in the establishment of truth would act with more caution and forbearance. I have no excuse to plead, no forgiveness to ask, for what I am now going to disclose. I demand nothing from you but your patient attention while I lay before you the motives of my present visit.
"You are no stranger to my attachment to Mrs. Talbot. That my passion is requited is likewise known to you. That her mother objects to her union with me, and raises her objections on certain improprieties in my character and conduct, I suppose, has already come to your knowledge.
"You may naturally suppose that I am desirous of gaming her favour; but it is not by the practice of fraud and iniquity, and therefore I have not begun with denying or concealing my faults. Very faulty, very criminal, have I been; to deny that would be adding to the number of my transgressions: but I assure you, Miss Jessup, there have been limits to my follies; there is a boundary beyond which I have never gone. Mrs. Fielder imagines me much more criminal than I really am, and her opinion of me--which, if limited in the strictest manner by my merits, would amply justify her aversion to my marriage with her daughter--is, however, carried further than justice allows.
"Mrs. Fielder has been somewhat deceived with regard to me. She thinks me capable of a guilt of which, vicious as I am, I am yet incapable. Nay, she imagines I have actually committed a crime of which I am wholly innocent.
"What think you, madam," (taking her hand, and eyeing her with steadfastness;) "she thinks me at once so artful and so wicked that I have made the wife unfaithful to the husband; that I have persuaded Mrs. Talbot to forget what was due to herself, her fame, and to trample on her marriage-vow.
"This opinion is not a vague conjecture on suspicion. It is founded in what seems to be the most infallible of all evidence; the written confession of her daughter. The paper appears to be a letter which was addressed to the seducer soon after the guilty interview. This paper came indirectly into Mrs. Fielder's hands. To justify her charge against us, she has shown it to, us. Now, madam, the guilt imputed to us is a stranger to our hearts. The crime which this letter confesses never was committed, and the letter which contains the confession never was written by Jane. It is a forgery.
"Mrs. Fielder's misapprehension, so far as it relates to me, is of very little moment. I can hope for nothing from the removal of this error while so many instances of real misconduct continue to plead against me, but her daughter's happiness is materially affected by it, and for her sake I am anxious to vindicate her fame from this reproach.
"No doubt, Miss Jessup, you have often asked me in your heart, since I began to speak, why I have stated this transaction to you. What interest have you in our concerns? What proofs of affection or esteem have you received from us, that should make you zealous in our behalf? Or what relation has your interest in any respect to our weal or woe? Why should you be called upon as a counsellor or umpire in the little family dissensions of Mrs. Talbot and her mother?
"And do indeed these questions rise in your heart, Miss Jessup? Does not memory enable you to account for conduct which, to the distant and casual observer, to those who know not what you know, would appear strange and absurd?