however help indulging her curiosity, so far as to walk on the
other side of a thick yew hedge, to listen to their discourse; and
as they walked on, she heard Sempronius entreat Caelia to be
cheerful, and think no more of her treacherous friend, whose
wickedness he doubted not would sufficiently punish itself. She
then heard Caelia say, 'I cannot bear, Sempronius, to hear you
speak so hardly of my Chloe. Say that you forgive her, and I will
indeed be cheerful.'

Nothing upon earth can be conceived so wretched as poor Chloe, for
on the first moment that she suffered herself to reflect on what
she had done, she thoroughly repented, and heartily detested
herself for such baseness. She went directly into the garden in
hopes of meeting Sempronius, to have thrown herself at his feet,
confessed her treachery, and to have begged him never to have
mentioned it to Caelia; but now she was conscious her repentance
would come too late; and he would despise her, if possible still
more, for such a recantation, after her knowledge of what had
passed between him and Caelia.

She could indeed have gone to him, and not have owned what she had
seen or heard; but now her abhorrence of even the appearance of
treachery or cunning was so great, that she could not bear to add
the smallest grain of falsehood or deceit to the weight of her
guilt, which was already almost insupportable: and should she
tell him of her repentance, with a confession of her knowledge of
his engagement with Caelia, it would (as has been before observed)
appear both servile and insincere.

Nothing could now appear so altered as the whole face of this once