tears, now again past the power of utterance by speech: her sympathizing friend considering, to repeat the contents of that paper would serve but to encrease her griefs, read to herself as follows:
"I Need not now be demanded the reasons of that despair you have so often observed, and which were indeed too justly visible for you not to perceive, yet Heaven will, I hope, forgive a crime which was involuntary.—Oh! that you would as readily be brought not to hate the man, whose death will soon atone the murder of Barnibar! But that were too vain a hope: by one rash act I have deprived you of a brother, who was extremely dear to you, and of a husband who valued nothing in competition with you—What can I say in vindication of what I have done, which will not seem rather to add to the heinousness of it? Yet had I loved you to a less violent degree, I had not thus been criminal; the grief I conceived for having taken the life of an innocent gentleman, and the brother of Stenoclea, should have made me, the next moment I knew to whom my sword had been so fatal, resign myself to justice; and, self-accused, testified how little my heart was capable of taking the part of murder, though acted by my own hand: but, oh! I must then have gone to the grave unblessed with your possession—it was not life, but the enjoyment of Stenoclea, that made me screen the murderer of your brother from the just censure of the law; yet, oh! I confess it was a self-interested flame, and you ought never to forgive the man, who, to feast on your charms, involved you in his destruction. Horrid guilt! I tremble to think how much I have wronged you; pity me, it is all I ask; as for a mitigation of my first crime, the killing of your brother, it is what I neither hope, nor will endeavour; the law requires my blood, and I will yield it a willing sacrifice; be you no more severe, nor hate, after
