How easily, my good mamma, may the most discerning and impartial be misled! The ignorant and envious have no choice between truth and error. Their tale must want something to complete it, or must possess more than the truth demands. Something you have heard of my friend injurious to his good name, and you condemn him unheard. Yet this displeases me not. I am not anxious for his justification, but only to know so much as will authorize me to conform to your wishes. You warn me against this marriage for my own sake. You think it will be disastrous to me.--The reasons of this apprehension would, you think, appear just in my eyes should they be disclosed, yet you will not disclose them. Without disclosure I cannot--as a rational creature, I _cannot_--change my resolution. If then I marry and the evil come that is threatened, whom have I to blame? at whose door must my misfortunes be laid if not at hers who had it in her power to prevent the evil and would not? Your treatment of me can proceed only from your love; and yet all the fruits of the direst enmity may grow out of it. By untimely concealments may my peace be forfeited forever. Judge then between your obligations to me, and those of secrecy, into which you seem to have entered with another. My happiness, my future conduct, are in your hand. Mould them, govern them, as you think proper. I have pointed out the means, and once more conjure you, by the love which you once bore, which you still bear, to me, to use them. JANE TALBOT. Letter XV _To Jane Talbot_ New York, October 27. Insolent creature that thou art, Jane, and cunning as insolent! To elude my just determination by such an artifice! To counterfeit a strange hand in the direction of thy letter, that I might thereby be induced to open it! Thou wilt not rest, I see, till thou hast torn from my heart every root, every fibre of my once-cherished tenderness; till thou hast laid my head low in the grave. To number the tears and the pangs which thy depravity has already cost me----but thy last act is destined to surpass all former ones. Thy perseverance in wickedness, thy inflexible imposture, amazes me beyond all utterance. Thy effrontery in boasting of thy innocence, in calling this wretch thy _friend_, thy _soul's_ friend, the means of securing the favour of a pure and all-seeing Judge, exceeds all that I supposed possible in human nature. And that thou, Jane, the darling of my heart, and the object of all my care and my pride, should be this profligate, this obdurate creature! When very young, you were ill of a fever. The physician gave up, for some hours, all hope of your life. I shall never forget the grief which his gloomy silence gave me. All that I held dear in the world, I then thought, I would cheerfully surrender to save your life.