This was noble; and I promised myself that, in you, I should find the one rare instance wherein no temptation could incline, or terror affright, into any species of concealment. I grant nothing could bring the temptation more strongly forward than the state into which Clement and you were forced: but still you should have resisted. Your every thought should still have flown to your lips. Your every intention should have been as public to those by whom you were surrounded as to yourself. No matter though it should dash aside a present project. Be openly firm in the resolution to do right, and, my life for it, the opposition of mistake and prejudice will bear no proportion in strength to your perseverance. It is evident that this plain and necessary truth mixed itself with your ideas, although the tumults of hope and fear, and the crowd of images that were then rushing on your mind, dazzled your perception; for you saw it in part, when you resolved to declare to Mr. Valmont in the morning all that you had done. Would you had previously declared it! I know how useless it is to wish over the past: yet I must again say--would you had previously declared it! You pause, Sibella--you are convinced: but you instantaneously quit the regret of that error for selfcongratulation. I can enter into all your feelings; and I find you now dwelling with pleasure on the supposition that I condemn only the concealment, that I look on the contract itself as an act of justice, and that I am about to applaud you for the fulfillment of a duty. And herein it is that I have doubted. To this one point have I called every present and remote circumstance; and it is from the combination of circumstances alone that I have been able to decide. The distinction becomes nice between praise and blame, for I have both to offer: yet, if I judge aright, some praise belongs to you--to the blame Mr. Valmont has an incontestible title. With such an education as he has given you, unless you had been a mere block without ideas, it was impossible you should not become a romantic enthusiast in whatever species of passion first engaged your feelings: and Mr. Valmont took care to make that first passion _Love_. Whatever cause can have led him to his present inconsistency, it is as evident to me as light and sensation--that it was his settled plan to render love for each other the ruling feature of your's and Clement's character. The contrivance was worthless; but the performance was admirable. Thus you and Clement loved from habit.