'A man may calculate on probabilities; and this is a moment in which I do not wish to conceal the full estimate which I make of my own conduct from you. Being therefore, seriously and speaking to the best of my judgment, as culpable as Wakefield, let my course of life hereafter be what it will, I find I am to expect no credit for sincerity from you?'
'You do not know Wakefield.'
'Neither it seems do you.'
'There is something in your countenance, in your conversation, and in the free and undisguised honesty even of your vices, that a man like Wakefield cannot possess.'
'Have you forgotten that, though I can be open and honest, I can be artful? Do you not remember billiards, hazard, and Bath?'
'Yes: but Wakefield would be incapable of the qualities of mind which you are now displaying. With you I feel myself in the company of a man of a perverted but a magnanimous spirit. With all your faults, I could hug you to my heart. But Wakefield! who made women and men alike his prey; to whose devilish arts the virtue and happiness of an amiable, I may say a charming, woman were sacrificed; and the life of one of the first of mankind was endangered; that he should resemble you, and especially that he should resemble you with your present inclinations, oh! would that were possible!'
'There is generosity in the wish. It denotes a power in you of allaying one of the most active fiends that torment mankind: the spirit of revenge.'
'It is a spirit I own to which I have been too subject; and which I could wish to exorcise for ever.'
'Put it to the test. Let us suppose you should discover as much of promise in Wakefield as you imagine you do in me.'
'I should then put him to the test. I should demand of him to repair the wrongs he has done Miss Wilmot!'