“Glenarvon, I do not reproach you: I never will. But your sudden, your unexpected silence, has given me more anguish than I can express. I will not doubt you: I will follow your last injunctions, and believe every thing sooner than that you will thus abandon me. If that time is indeed arrived—and I know how frail a possession guilty love must ever be—how much it is weakened by security—how much it is cooled by absence: do not give yourself the pain of deceiving me: there is no use in deceit. Say with kindness that another has gained your affections; but let them never incline you to treat me with cruelty. Oh, fear not, Glenarvon, that I shall intrude, or reproach you. I shall bear every affliction, if you but soften the pang to me by one soothing word. “Now, possibly, when you receive this, you will laugh at me for my fears: you will say I but echo back those which you indulged. But so sudden is the silence, so long the period of torturing suspense, that I must tremble till I receive one line from your dearest hand—one line to say that you are not offended with me. Remember that you are all on earth to me; and if I lose that for which I have paid so terrible a price, what then will be my fate! “I dread that you should have involved yourself seriously. Alas! I dread for you a thousand things that I dare not say. My friend, we have been very wicked. It is myself alone I blame. On me, on me be the crime; but if my life could save you, how gladly would I give it up! Oh, cannot we yet repent! Act well, Glenarvon: be not in love with crime: indeed, indeed, I tremble for you. It is not inconstancy that I fear. Whatever your errors may be, whatever fate be mine, my heart cannot be severed from you. I shall, as you have often said, never cease to love; but, were I to see your ruin, ah, believe me, it would grieve me more than my own. I am nothing, a mere cypher: you might be all that is great and superior. Act rightly, then, my friend; and hear this counsel, though it comes from one as fallen as I am. Think not that I wish to repine, or that I lament the past. You have rendered me happy: it is not you that I accuse. But, now that you are gone, I look with horror upon my situation; and my crimes by night and by day appear unvarnished before me. “I am frightened, Glenarvon: we have dared too much. I have followed you into a dark abyss; and now that you, my guide, my protector, have left my side, my former weakness returns, and all that one smile of yours could make me forget, oppresses and confounds me. The eye of God has marked me, and I sink at once. You will abandon me: that thought comprises all things in it. Therein lies the punishment of my crime; and God, they say, is just. The portrait which you have left with me has a stern look. Some have said that the likeness of a friend is preferable to himself, for that it ever smiles upon us; but with me it is the reverse. I never saw Glenarvon’s eyes gaze coldly on me till now. Farewell.