My conscience, lulled to repose by the fond hope of being necessary to your comforts, my dear Maclairn, as being the sharer of your sorrows, and the companion and friend in whose presence you sometimes solaced your woes, and as one whom you ever saw without trouble or disquietude, had ceased to upbraid me for crimes, to which I had been betrayed, by the authority of my brother and my own timidity. Had I, in the first hour, listened to my self-reproaches on discovering that I had been deceived, and that there still existed a witness against me able, in a moment, to render me the object of your scorn and detestation, I should not have shrunk from an open avowal of the infamy I had incurred; for I felt that the woman who is dishonoured in her own eyes, and condemned by her own conscience, can meet with no encrease to her misery from the contempt of the world. But as I was Malcolm Maclairn’s mother and the ostensible guardian of his father’s honour and unsullied name, I have been dumb, and have sustained my burden with patience for their sakes. But the time is not far remote, when Heaven, in compassion to my contrition and sorrows, will release me. You, my beloved Maclairn, will acknowledge that I have been faithful; and Malcolm will honour his mother’s grave with a tear, and he will say, “she has expiated her offence by her sufferings, and has proclaimed that she loved the truth, from which she was so fatally led away by a _Flamall_. Let me, O heaven, depart in this hope! or be, as though I had never lived to those for whom I have lived. Oh spare to them the pang of pronouncing Harriet unworthy of the name of Maclairn! I will not, my dear Lucy, hazard a single reflexion on this touching narrative, until the full tide of my compassion is somewhat subsided. At present I am disposed to consider that virtue too rigid, which could condemn a culprit like Lady Maclairn; and to say the truth, my heart is too well disposed to admire and to acquit her. You will not, therefore, expect any decision in opinion until you hear from me again. I shall be anxious to hear that this packet reaches you in safety. Believe, that though Lady Maclairn’s “dear friend,” I am still your RACHEL COWLEY. P. S. Mrs. Allen sends her love. She is convinced that Miss Flint loses ground. CHAP. VII. LETTER LVI. _From Miss Cowley to Miss Hardcastle._