VOLUME II
LETTER I
FROM CAROLINE ASHBURN
TO
SIBELLA VALMONT
I have not answered your letter, my dear Sibella, as soon as you perhaps may have expected, because I was willing to dwell on the circumstances it contained, till the minutest shade was present with me, and till I discovered exactly wherein to praise, or wherein to blame. The time I have taken to deliberate has not been thrown away, for it has excited ideas in my mind that may prove of infinite service to us both: and should I in future find aught to add or diminish from my sentiments, I shall offer it as frankly as I now do my present decision.
Sibella, well might you, even at the door of Clement's apartment, retreat from your enterprise: for then, at that moment, you wandered the first step from your rectitude; and had you, instead of sitting down to detail your reasons to me, enquired narrowly into the cause of your sensations, you must have discovered that error was creeping in upon you, and that your native frankness and stedfast sincerity were making a vigorous effort to repel secresy, that canker-worm of virtue.
Have you forgotten, my Sibella, when you said—'I am not weak enough to descend to artifice. Did I believe it right to go, I should go openly. Then might he try his opposing strength: but he would find that I could leap, swim or dive, and that walls or moats are feeble barriers to a determined will.'
This was noble; and I promised myself that, in you, I should find the one rare instance wherein no temptation could incline, or terror affright, into any species of concealment. I grant nothing could bring the temptation more strongly forward than the state into which Clement and you were forced: but still you should have resisted. Your every thought should still have flown to your lips. Your every intention should have been as public to those by whom you were surrounded as to yourself. No matter though it should dash aside a present project. Be openly firm in the resolution to do right, and, my life for it, the opposition of mistake and prejudice will bear no proportion in strength to your perseverance.
It is evident that this plain and necessary truth mixed itself with your ideas, although the tumults of hope and fear, and the crowd of images that were then rushing on your mind, dazzled your perception; for you saw it in part, when you resolved to declare to Mr. Valmont in the morning all that you had done. Would you had previously declared it! I know how useless it is to wish over the past: yet I must again say—would you had previously declared it!
You pause, Sibella—you are convinced: but you instantaneously quit the regret of that error for selfcongratulation. I can enter into all your feelings; and I find you now dwelling with pleasure on the supposition that I condemn only the concealment, that I look on the contract itself as an act of justice, and that I am about to applaud you for the fulfillment of a duty. And herein it is that I have doubted. To this one point have I called every present and remote circumstance; and it is from the combination of circumstances alone that I have been able to decide. The distinction becomes nice between praise and blame, for I have both to offer: yet, if I judge aright, some praise belongs to you—to the blame Mr. Valmont has an incontestible title.