I frequently reiterated these reasonings, always with encreased fervor and earnestness: represented--'that every step I took in advance would be miles in return--every minute that the blow was suspended, prepared it to descend with accumulated force.' I required no particulars, but merely requested to be assured of _a present, existing, engagement_. I continued, from time to time, to urge this subject. 'Much,' said I, 'as I esteem you, and deeply as a thousand associations have fixed your idea in my heart--in true candour of soul, I, yet, feel myself your superior.--I recollect a sentiment of Richardson's Clarissa that always pleased me, and that may afford a test, by which each of us may judge of the integrity of our own minds--"I should be glad that you, and all the world, knew my heart; let my enemies sit in judgment upon my actions; fairly scanned, I fear not the result. Let them ask me my most secret thoughts; and, whether they make for me, or against me, I will reveal them." 'This is the principle, my friend, upon which I have acted towards you. I have said many things, I doubt not, which make against me; but I trusted them to one, who told me, that he had made the human heart his study: and it is only in compliance with the prejudices of others, if I have taken any pains to conceal all I have thought and felt on this, or on any other, subject, from the rest of the world. Had I not, in the wild career of fervent feeling, had sufficient strength of mind to stop short, and to reason calmly, how often, in the bitterness of my spirit, should I have accused you of sporting with my feelings, by involving me in a hopeless maze of conjecture--by leaving me a prey to the constant, oppressive, apprehension of hearing something, which I should not have had the fortitude to support with dignity; which, in proportion as it is delayed, still contributes to harrass, to weaken, to incapacitate, my mind from bearing its disclosure. 'I know you might reply--and more than nine-tenths of the world would justify you in this reply--"That you had already said, what ought to have been sufficient, and would have been so to any other human being;--that you had not sought the confidence I boast of having reposed in you;--and that so far from affording you any satisfaction, it has occasioned you only perplexity. If my own destiny was not equivocal, of what importance could it be to me, and what right had I to enquire after circumstances, in which, however affecting, I could have no real concern."