Falkland from the first as a beneficent divinity. I had observed at
leisure, and with a minuteness which could not deceive me, the excellent
qualities of his heart; and I found him possessed of a mind beyond
comparison the most fertile and accomplished I had ever known.

But though the terrors which had impressed me were considerably
alleviated, my situation was notwithstanding sufficiently miserable. The
ease and light-heartedness of my youth were for ever gone. The voice of
an irresistible necessity had commanded me to "sleep no more." I was
tormented with a secret, of which I must never disburthen myself; and
this consciousness was, at my age, a source of perpetual melancholy. I
had made myself a prisoner, in the most intolerable sense of that term,
for years--perhaps for the rest of my life. Though my prudence and
discretion should be invariable, I must remember that I should have an
overseer, vigilant from conscious guilt, full of resentment at the
unjustifiable means by which I had extorted from him a confession, and
whose lightest caprice might at any time decide upon every thing that
was dear to me. The vigilance even of a public and systematical
despotism is poor, compared with a vigilance which is thus goaded by the
most anxious passions of the soul. Against this species of persecution I
knew not how to invent a refuge. I dared neither fly from the
observation of Mr. Falkland, nor continue exposed to its operation. I
was at first indeed lulled in a certain degree to security upon the
verge of the precipice. But it was not long before I found a thousand
circumstances perpetually reminding me of my true situation. Those I am
now to relate are among the most memorable.