'Not my own experience,' returned Adeline; 'for the painful situations in which I have been placed, I might attribute, not to the fallacy of the system on which I have acted, but to those existing prejudices in society which I wish to see destroyed.' 'Then, to what else is the change in your sentiments to be attributed?' 'To a more serious, unimpassioned, and unprejudiced view of the subject than I had before taken: at present I am not equal to expatiate on matters so important: however, some time or other, perhaps, I may make known to you my sentiments on them in a more ample manner: but I have, I trust, said enough to lead you to conclude, that though Mr Berrendale's conduct to me has been atrocious, and that you are in many respects entitled to my gratitude and thanks, you and I must henceforward be strangers to each other.' Colonel Mordaunt, little expecting such a total overthrow to his hopes, was, on receiving it, choked with contending emotions; and his broken sentences and pale cheek were sufficiently expressive of the distress which he endured. But I shall not enter into a detail of all he urged in favour of his passion; nor the calm, dignified, manner in which Adeline replied. Suffice that, at last, from a sort of intuitive knowledge of the human heart, as it were, which persons of quick talent and sensibilities possess however defective their experience, Adeline resolved to try to soothe the self-love which she had wounded, knowing that self-love is scarcely to be distinguished in its effects from love itself; and that the agony of disappointed passion is always greater when it is inflicted by the coldness or falsehood of the beloved object, than when it proceeds from parental prohibition, or the cruel separation enjoined by conscious poverty. She therefore told Colonel Mordaunt that he was once very near being the first choice of her heart: when she first saw him, she said, his person, and manners, and attentions, had so strongly prepossessed her in his favour, that he himself, by ceasing to see and converse with her, could alone have saved her from the pain of a hopeless attachment. 'In pity, spare me,' cried Mordaunt, 'the contemplation of the happiness I might have enjoyed!' 'But you know you were not a marrying-man, as it is called; and forgive me if I say, that men who can on system suppress the best feelings of their nature, and prefer a course of libertine indulgence to a virtuous connexion, at that time of life when they might become happy husbands and fathers, with the reasonable expectation of living to see their children grown up to manhood, and superintending their education themselves--such men, Colonel Mordaunt, deserve, in the decline of life, to feel that regret and that self-condemnation which you this moment anticipate.' 'True--too true!' replied the colonel; 'but, for mercy's sake, torture me no more.' 'I would not probe where I did not intend to make a cure,' replied Adeline. 'A cure!--what mean you!'