Did I but better understand this Clifton, I should better know how to decide. That he looks up to her with admiration I am convinced. She seems to have discovered the true key to his understanding as well as to his affections. Even within this day or two, I have observed symptoms very much in his favour. How do I know but thus influenced he may become the first of mankind? The thought restores me to a sense of right. Never, Oliver, shall self complacency make me guilty of what cannot but be a crime most heinous! If such a mind may by these means be gained which would otherwise be lost, shall it be extinguished by me? Would not an assassination like this outweigh thousands of common murders? Well may I shudder at such an act! Oliver, I am resolved. If there be power in words or in reason my father shall comply. As far as I understand the human mind, there is and even should he persevere there always must be something to me enigmatical in this instance of its efforts in Clifton. Persevere however I most sincerely hope and even believe he will.--But should he not?--The supposition is dreadful!--Anna St. Ives!--My heart sinks within me!--Can virtue like hers be vulnerable?--Surely not!--The more pure a woman is in principle the more secure would she be from common seducers. But, if the man can be found who possesses the necessary though apparently incompatible excess of folly and wisdom, there is a mode by which such a woman is more open to the arts of deceit than any other. And is not that woman Anna St. Ives? Nay more, if he be not a prodigy of even a still more extraordinary kind, is not that man Coke Clifton? He came in the heyday of youthful pride, self-satisfied, self-convinced, rooted in prejudice but abundant in ideas. Argument made no impression; for where he ought to have listened he laughed. The weapons of wit never failed him; and, while he launched them at others, they recoiled and continually lacerated himself. Of this he was insensible: he felt them not, or felt them but little. His haughtiness never slumbered; and to oppose him was to irritate, not convince. For four months he continued pertinaciously the same; then, without any cause known to me, suddenly changed. It was indeed too sudden not to be alarming! And yet my firm and cool answer to all this is that hypocrisy so foolish as well as atrocious is all but impossible-- Indeed, Oliver, I do not seek to wrong him: I do not hunt after unfavourable conjectures, they force themselves upon me: or if I do it is unconsciously. The passions are strangely perverse: and if I am deceived, as I hope I am, it is they that misguide me.