'I had hoped,' I told him, 'ere this, to have received the promised letter--Yet, I do not take up my pen,' said I, 'either to complain of, or to importune, you. If I have already expressed myself with bitterness, let the harrassed state of my mind be my excuse. My own conduct has been too erroneous, too eccentric, to enable me to judge impartially of your's. Forgive me, if by placing you in an embarrassing situation, I have exposed you to consequent mistake or uneasiness. I feel, that whatever errors we may either of us have committed, _originated only with myself_, and I am content to suffer all the consequences. It is true, had you reposed in me an early, generous, confidence, much misery would have been avoided--I had not been wounded "There, where the human heart most exquisitely feels!" 'You had been still my friend, and I had been comparatively happy. Every passion is, in a great measure, the growth of indulgence: all our desires are, in their commencement, easily suppressed, when there appears no probability of attaining their object; but when strengthened, by time and reflection, into habit, in endeavouring to eradicate them, we tear away part of the mind. In my attachments there is a kind of savage tenacity--they are of an elastic nature, and, being forced back, return with additional violence. 'My affection for you has not been, altogether, irrational or selfish. While I felt that I loved you, as no other woman, I was convinced, would love you--I conceived, could I once engage your heart, I could satisfy, and even, purify it. While I loved your virtues, I thought I saw, and I lamented, the foibles which sullied them. I suspected you, perhaps erroneously, of pride, ambition, the love of distinction; yet your ambition could not, I thought, be of an ignoble nature--I feared that the gratifications you sought, if, indeed, attainable, were factitious--I even fancied I perceived you, against your better judgment, labouring to seduce yourself!' "He is under a delusion," said I, to myself;--"reason may be stunned, or blinded, for awhile; but it will revive in the heart, and do its office, when sophistry will be of no avail." I saw you struggling with vexations, that I was assured might be meliorated by tender confidence--I longed to pour its balms into your bosom. My sensibility disquieted you, and myself, only _because it was constrained_. I thought I perceived a conflict in your mind--I watched its progress with attention and solicitude. A thousand times has my fluttering heart yearned to break the cruel chains that fettered it, and to chase the cloud, which stole over your brow, by the tender,