“That I have written to your daughter since an unfortunate event has taken place was an additional breach of propriety, for which I have suffered well. But I will candidly confess that I not only do not feel it to have been of the same extent, but that I consider it to have been unavoidable after what has passed; for though I will not attempt to justify in the smallest degree my former conduct, yet, when an attachment was once formed between us—and a sincerer one never did exist—I feel that, peculiarly circumstanced as I then was, to have left her uncertain of my situation would neither have weaned her affections nor lessened her anxiety; and looking upon her as one, whom, if I had lived, I hoped to have had my partner for life, I did hold the removing of her anxiety above every other consideration. I would rather have had the affections of your daughter in the back settlements of America, than the first situation this country could afford without them. “I know not whether this will be any extenuation of my offence. I know not whether it will be any extenuation of it to know that if I had that situation in my power at this moment I would relinquish it to devote my life to her happiness. I know not whether success would have blotted out the recollection of what I have done. But I know that a man with the coldness of death on him need not be made to feel any other coldness, and that he may be spared any addition to the misery he feels, not for himself, but for those to whom he has left nothing but sorrow.” * * * * * There were all the elements of the cad in John Philpot Curran’s character, and these came to the surface after his return to his house on September 9th, when he presented himself in the darkened chamber where his daughter lay in her agony. After one terrible interview, he refused to see her, or to speak to her, ever again. He had perforce to shelter her for a little time longer under his roof—for brain fever, followed by a temporary loss of reason, brought her to death’s door. She was thus mercifully spared, as her friend said, “the misery of travelling step by step, through the wilderness of woe which Emmet’s trial and execution would have proved to her.” On the night before his execution (while his love tossed in the delirium of fever, and the sister who watched by her bed had her heart torn by the way she called his name) Robert Emmet wrote two letters which are eloquent of the thoughts of her which filled his heart until it ceased to beat. One is addressed to her brother, Richard, who had found means to send his friend a message of kindness, which might almost atone for his father’s caddish cruelty: “My dearest Richard,