“I cannot quite understand,” said he. “I gave you a copy of 'The Vicar of Wakefield' when you were going to Devonshire a year ago. You were complaining that your sister had taken away with her the copy which I had presented to your mother, so that you had not an opportunity of reading it.”
“It was that which saved me,” she cried. “Oh, what fools girls are! They are carried away by such devices as should not impose upon the merest child! Why are we not taught from our childhood of the baseness of men—some men—so that we can be on our guard when we are on the verge of womanhood? If we are to live in the world why should we not be told all that we should guard against?”
She laid her head down on the arm of the sofa, sobbing.
He put his hand gently upon her hair, saying—
“I cannot believe anything but what is good regarding you, my sweet Jessamy Bride.”
She raised her head quickly and looked at him through her tears.
“Then you will err,” she said. “You will have to think ill of me. Thank God you saved me from the worst, but it was not in your power to save me from all—to save me from myself. Listen to me, my best friend. When I was in Devonshire last year I met that man. He was staying in the village, pretending that he was recovering from a wound which he had received in our colonies in America. He was looked on as a hero and feted in all directions. Every girl for miles around was in love with him, and I—innocent fool that I was—considered myself the most favoured creature in the world because he made love to me. Any day we failed to meet I wrote him a letter—a foolish letter such as a school miss might write—full of protestations of undying affection. I sometimes wrote two of these letters in the day. More than a month passed in this foolishness, and then it came to my uncle's ears that we had meetings. He forbade my continuing to see a man of whom no one knew anything definite, but about whom he was having strict inquiries made. I wrote to the man to this effect, and I received a reply persuading me to have one more meeting with him. I was so infatuated that I met him secretly, and then in impassioned strains he implored me to make a runaway match with him. He said he had enemies. When he had been fighting the King's battles against the rebels these enemies had been active, and he feared that their malice would come between us, and he should lose me. I was so carried away by his pleading that I consented to leave my uncle's house by his side.”
“But you cannot have done so.”
“You saved me,” she cried. “I had been reading your book, and, by God's mercy, on the very day before that on which I had promised to go to him I came to the story of poor Olivia's flight and its consequences. With the suddenness of a revelation from heaven I perceived the truth. The scales fell from my eyes as they fell from St. Paul's on the way to Damascus, only where he perceived the heaven I saw the hell that awaited me. I knew that that man was endeavouring to encompass my ruin, and in a single hour—thanks to the genius that wrote that book—my love for that man, or what I fancied was love, was turned to loathing. I did not meet him. I returned to him, without a word of comment, a letter he wrote to me reproaching me for disappointing him; and the very next day my uncle's suspicions regarding him were confirmed. His inquiries resulted in proof positive of the ruffianism of the fellow who called himself Captain Jackson, He had left the army in America with a stain on his character, and it was known that since his return to England at least two young women had been led into the trap which he laid for me.”
“Thank God you were saved, my child,” said Goldsmith, as she paused, overcome with emotion. “But being saved, my dear, you have no further reason to fear that man.”