One evening I dropped familiarly in upon your daughter. Nobody was there but Mr. Talbot and she. She was writing at her desk as usual, for she seemed never at ease but with a pen in her fingers; and Mr. Talbot seemed thoughtful and uneasy. At my entrance the desk was hastily closed and locked. But first she took out some papers, and, mentioning her design of going up-stairs to put them away, she tripped to the door. Looking back, however, she perceived she had dropped one. This she took up, in some hurry, and withdrew. Instead of conversing with me, Talbot walked about the room in a peevish and gloomy humour. A thought just then rushed into my mind. While Talbot had his back towards me, and was at a distance, I dropped the counterfeit, at the spot where Jane had just before dropped her paper, and with little ceremony took my leave. Jane had excused her absence to me, and promised to return within _five minutes_. It was not possible, I thought, that Talbot's eye, as he walked backward and forward during that interval, could miss the paper, which would not fail to appear as if dropped by his wife. My timidity and conscious guilt hindered me from attempting to discover, by any direct means, the effects of my artifice. I was mortified extremely in finding no remarkable difference in their deportment to each other. Sometimes I feared I had betrayed myself; but no alteration ever afterwards appeared in their behaviour to me. I know how little I deserve to be forgiven. Nothing can palliate the baseness of this action. I acknowledge it with the deepest remorse, and nothing, especially since the death of Mr. Talbot, has lessened my grief, but the hope that some unknown cause prevented the full effect of this forgery on his peace, and that the secret, carefully locked up in his own breast, expired with him. All my enmities and restless jealousy found their repose in the same grave. You have come to the knowledge of this letter, and I now find that the fraud was attended with even more success than I wished it to have. Let me now, though late, put an end to the illusion, and again assure you, madam, that the concluding paragraphs were _written by me_, and that those parts of it which truly belong to your daughter are perfectly innocent. If it were possible for you to forgive my misconduct, and to suffer this confession to go no further than the evil has gone, you will confer as great a comfort as can now be conferred on the unhappy M. JESSUP. Letter XLIX _To James Montford_ Philadelphia, December 9. I WILL imagine, my friend, that you have read the letter [Footnote: The preceding one.] which I have hastily transcribed. I will not stop to tell you my reflections upon it, but shall hasten with this letter to Mrs. Fielder. I might send it; but I have grown desperate.