ought to be informed of a secret which I blush to avow. If you abandon me, it is not _me_ alone you kill. The fruit of my guilty love will perish with me.' Nothing can describe my sensations; that new, that sacred duty, absorbed my whole soul, and made me more submissively her slave than ever. I would have married her at once, but for the ruinous consequences that must have befallen me, as an Englishman, in then and there giving my name to the civil authorities. I deferred our union, therefore, till we could fly to England, and determined never to leave my victim till then. At first, this calmed her; but she soon renewed her complaints against me, for not braving all impediments to make her my wife. I should shortly have bent to her will, for I had fallen into the deepest melancholy, and passed whole days alone, without power to move--a prey to an idea which I never confessed to myself, though its persecution was incessant. I had a forboding of my father's illness, which I considered a weakness unworthy of belief. My reason was so bewildered by the shock my mistress had dealt me, that I now combated my sense of duty as a passion; and that which I might have then thought my passion, tormented me as a duty. Madame d'Arbigny was perpetually writing me entreaties to visit her; at last I went, but did not speak on the subject which gave her such rights over me: indeed, she now less frequently alluded to it herself than I expected; but my sufferings were too great for me to remark that at the time. Once, when I had kept my house for three days, writing twenty letters to my father, and tearing them all, M. Maltigues, who seldom sought me, came, deputed by his cousin, to tear me from my solitude. Though little interested in the success of his embassy, as you will discover, he entered before I had time to conceal that my face was bathed in tears. 'What is the use of all this, my dear boy?' he said; 'either leave my cousin, or marry her. The one step is as good as the other, each being conclusive.'--'There are situations in life,' replied I, 'where even by sacrificing one's self, one may not be able to fulfil every duty.'--'That is, there ought to be no such sacrifice,' he added. 'I know of no circumstances in which it is necessary; with a little address, one may back out of anything. Management is the queen of the world.'--'I covet no such ability,' said I; 'but at least would wish, in resigning myself to unhappiness, to afflict no one that I love.'--'Have nothing to do, then, with the intricate work they call love; it is a sickness of the soul. I am attacked by it at times, like any one else; but when it so happens, I tell myself that it shall soon be over, and always keep my word.' Seeking to deal, like himself, with generalities--for I neither could nor would confide in him--I answered: 'Do what we will with love, we cannot banish honor and virtue, that often oppose our inclination.'--'If you mean, by honor, the necessity