Hear me, madam!--Yes ominous! I see no end to it, have every thing to fear from it, and nothing to hope--There is a thought--Ay, that verges to madness!--I have a rival--! But I will forget it--at least will try. Who can deny that it is excruciating?--But I am actuated at present by another and a nobler motive. You know, madam, what you found me; and I hope you are not quite unconscious of what you have made me. You have taught me principles to which I mean to adhere, and truths I intend to assert; have opened views to me of immense magnitude! In your society I am secure. But habits are inveterate, and easily revived; and were I torn from you, I myself know not the degree of my own danger. Yes, madam, fain indeed would I forget there is such a person as Frank Henley! Yet how? By what effort, what artifice? Say! Teach me! What though my heart reproaches me with its own foibles, who can prevent possibilities, mere possibilities, in a case like this, from being absolute torments? My soul pants and aches after certainty! The moment I ask myself what doubt there can be of Anna St. Ives, I answer none, none! Yet the moment after, forgetting this question, alarms, probabilities, past scenes and intolerable suppositions swarm to assault me, without relaxation or mercy. Clifton, you said you had a nobler motive. I merit the reproach, madam. These effusions burst from me, are unworthy of me, and I disclaim them. You have pardoned many of my strays and mistakes, and I am sure will pardon this. [For the love of fame, Fairfax, do not suffer the numerous master-strokes of this dialogue to escape you. I cannot stay to point them out.] Yes, madam, I have a nobler motive! Yet, enlarged as your mind is, I know not how to prepare you calmly to listen to me, without alarm and without prevention. Strange as it may seem, I dread to speak truth even to you! If truth it be, speak, and fear nothing. Propose but any adequate and worthy purpose, and there is no pain, no danger, no disgrace from which if I know myself I would shrink. No disgrace, madam? Your words and looks both doubt me--Put me to the proof. Propose I say an adequate and worthy purpose, and let your test be such as nature shudders at; then despise me and my principles if I recoil. The union of marriage demands reciprocal, unequivocal, and unbounded confidence; for how can we pretend to love those whom we cannot trust? The man who is unworthy this unbounded confidence is most unworthy to be a husband; and it were even better he should shew his bad qualities, by basely and dishonestly deserting her who had committed herself body and soul to his honour, than that such qualities should discover themselves after marriage. There is no disgrace can equal the torment of such an alliance. I grant it.