A long and solemn pause ensued, which was at last interrupted by the Earl of M. With a firm and collected air he replied: “That youth who kneels at your feet, is my son; but till this moment I was ignorant that he was known to you: I was equally unaware of those claims which he has now made on the heart of your daughter. If he has deceived you he also, has deceived his father! For myself, if imposition can be extenuated, mine merits forgiveness, for it was founded on honourable and virtuous motives. To restore to you the blessings of independence; to raise your daughter to that rank in life, her birth, her virtues, and her talents merit; and to obtain your assistance in dissipating the ignorance, improving the state, and ameliorating the condition of those poor unhappy compatriots, who, living immediately within your own sphere of action, are influenced by your example, and would best be actuated by your counsel. Such were the wishes of my heart; but _prejudice_, the enemy of all human virtue and human felicity, forbade their execution. My first overtures of amity were treated with scorn; my first offers of service rejected with disdain; and my crime was that in a distant age an ancestor of mine, by the fortune of war, had possessed himself of those domains, which, in a more distant age, a remoter ancestor of yours won by similar means. “Thus denied the open declaration of my good intents, I stooped to the assumption of a fictitious character; and he who as a hereditary enemy was forbid your house, as an unknown and unfortunate stranger, under affected circumstances of peculiar danger, was received to your protection, and soon to your heart as its dearest friend. The influence I obtained over your mind, I used to the salutary purpose of awakening it to a train of ideas more liberal than the prejudices of education had hitherto suffered it to cherish; and the services I had it in my power to render you, the fervour of your gratitude so far over-rated, as to induce you to repay them by the most precious of all donations--your child. But for the wonderful and most unexpected incident which has now crossed your designs, your daughter had been by this the wife of the Earl of M.”