I passed the most anxious and most restless night that I ever yet had known in life. New feelings had got possession of my heart, strong, violent, irresistible and thoughtful, watchful, unreposing, my mind remained active with many bitter and painful images, and with many wild and anxious thoughts. My determination, however, was taken ere I rose the following morning, nor was it taken without full consideration of the circumstances under which I was to act. Had my cousin's conduct towards me, I asked myself, been such as to lay me under any bond of gratitude or tie of honour to sacrifice calmly all my own hopes of happiness in life, while at the same time I saw sacrificed the peace, the comfort, the temporal, perhaps the eternal repose of the being I most loved on all the earth? The answer was plain and straightforward; there was no such tie: and then, again, I thought of the baroness--not the second wife, but the first--of her who had been a mother to me--more than a mother; and I asked myself how all that I owed to her ought to affect my conduct towards her child. That, too, was soon determined. I felt a consciousness that I could make Louise happy, that I could secure her peace and comfort, and that, if fortune were but added, there could be no danger or difficulty, no pain or anxiety within the common range of probabilities, that I could not guard her from and protect her against. Was there anything, therefore, in the deep feelings of gratitude and love which I experienced towards the dead, which should forbid my making the attempt so to protect and shield the child of her who had conferred so many benefits upon me? Was it not rather what I owed her, to endeavour, as far as Heaven gave me power, to prevent my poor Louise from being driven into a union with one who could make her only wretched; the pure tied to the impure, the innocent to the corrupt? Again the answer was--yes! No one can say, when he argues with his own heart on a question where all its deepest feelings are interested--no one can say that simple, straightforward reason alone dictates the reply; nor can I say that it was so in the present instance. But still I had done my best to make it do so. I believed that I was right; I believed that there could scarcely be any farther question of what my conduct ought to be; and I determined, therefore, to tell Louise of how I loved her; to inform her of my hopes and wishes for the future; not, indeed, to bind her by any promises, but to open her eyes, to satisfy myself as to the feelings of her heart, and then to leave her native strength of mind, her resolution and her love, to do the rest.