University of Virginia Library

LETTER LII.

It is not improbable that as soon as you recognize
the hand that wrote this letter, you will
throw it unread into the fire, yet it comes not
to sooth resentment or to supplicate for mercy.
It seeks not a favourable audience. It wishes
not, because the wish would be chimerical, to
have its affertions believed. It expects not
even to be read. All I hope is that, though neglected,
despised and discredited for the present,
it may not be precipitately destroyed or

utterly forgotten. The time will come, when
it will be read with a different spirit.

You inform me that Miss Jessup has denied
her letter, and imputes to me the wickedness
of forging her name to a false confession. You
are justly astonished at the iniquity and folly
of what you deem my artifice. This astonishment,
when you look back upon my past
misconduct, is turned from me to yourself: from
my folly to your own credulity, that was, for a
moment, made the dupe of my contrivances.

I can say nothing that will or that ought—that
is my peculiar misery;—that ought, considering
the measure of my real guilt, to screen me
from this charge. There is but one event that
can shake your opinion. An event that is barely
possible; that may not happen, if it happen
at all, till the lapse of years; and from which,
even if I were alive, I could not hope to derive
advantage. Miss Jessup's conscience may awaken
time enough to enable her to undeceive you,
and to repent of her second, as well as her first fraud.

If that event ever takes place, perhaps this letter
may still exist to bear testimony to my rectitude.
Thrown aside and long forgotten, or
never read, chance may put it in your way,
once more. Time, that soother of resentment
as well as lessener of love, and the perseverance
of your daughter in the way you prescribe, may
soften your asperities even towards me. A generous
heart like yours, will feel an emotion of
joy that I have not been quite as guilty as you
had reason to believe.

Give me leave, Madam, to anticipate that
moment. The number of my consolations
are few. Your enmity I rank among my chief
misfortunes, and the more so because I deserve
much, though not all your enmity. The persuasion
that the time will come when you will acquit
me of this charge, is, even now, a comforter.
This is more desirable to me since it
will relieve your daughter from one among the
many evils in which she has been involved by
the vices and infirmities of