"I have something more to say to you, which I scarcely know how to
communicate. Somebody here has loaded your character with very heavy
imputations. You are said to be addicted to gaming, sensuality, and the
lowest vices. How much grief this intelligence has given to all who love
you, you will easily imagine. To find you innocent of these charges would
free my heart from the keenest solicitude it has hitherto felt. I leave to
you the proper means of doing this, if you can do it without violation of
truth.

"I am very imperfectly acquainted with your present views. You
originally designed, after having completed your academical and legal
education, to return to America. If this should still be your intention,
the enclosed will obviate some of your pecuniary embarrassments, and my
mother enjoins me to tell you that, as you may need a few months longer to
make the necessary preparations for returning, you may draw on her for an
additional sum of five hundred dollars. Adieu."

My relation to Risberg was peculiarly delicate. His more lively
imagination had deceived him already into a belief that he was in love. At
least, in all his letters, he seemed fond of recognising that engagement
which my father had established between us, and exaggerated the
importance, to his happiness, of my regard. Experience had already taught
me to set their just value on such professions. I knew that men are
sanguine and confident, and that the imaginary gracefulness of passion
naturally prompts them to make their words outstrip their feelings. Though
eager in their present course, it is easy to divert them from it; and most
men of an ardent temper can be dying of love for half a dozen different
women in the course of a year.

Women feel deeply, but boast not. The supposed indecency of forwardness