Is it possible that my visits to Miss Secker have given you any
concern? Why must the source of your anxiety be always so mortifying and
opprobrious to me? That the absence of a few days, and the company of
another woman, should be thought to change my sentiments, and make me
secretly recant those vows which I offered to you, is an imputation on my
common sense which--I suppose I deserve. You judge of me from what you
know of me. How can you do otherwise? If my past conduct naturally creates
such suspicions, who am I to blame but myself? Reformation should precede
respect; and how should I gain confidence in my integrity but as the fruit
of perseverance in well-doing?

Alas! how much has he lost who has forfeited his own esteem!

As to Miss Secker, your ignorance of her, and, I may add, of yourself,
has given her the preference. You think her your superior, no doubt, in
every estimable and attractive quality, and therefore suspect her
influence on a being so sensual and volatile as poor Hal. Were she really
more lovely, the faithless and giddy wretch might possibly forget you; but
Miss Secker is a woman whose mind and person are not only inferior to
yours, but wholly unfitted to inspire love. If it were possible to smile
in my present mood, I think I should indulge _one smile_ at the
thought of falling in love with a woman who has scarcely had education
enough to enable her to write her name, who has been confined to her bed
about eighteen months by a rheumatism contracted by too assiduous
application to the wash-tub, and who often boasts that she was born, not
above forty-five years ago, in an upper story of the mansion at Mount
Vernon.

You do not tell me who it was that betrayed me to you. I suspect,