let me not be ungrateful for the preference you grant me, merely because
it is not so enthusiastic and unlimited as my own.

I suppose, if I had not extorted from you some account of this poor
woman, I should never have heard a syllable of your meeting with her. It
is surely possible for people to be their own calumniators, to place their
own actions in the worst light, to exaggerate their faults and conceal
their virtues. If the fictions and artifices of vanity be detestable, the
concealment of our good actions is surely not without guilt. The
conviction of our guilt is painful to those that love us: wantonly and
needlessly to give this pain is very perverse and unjustifiable. If a
contrary deportment argue vanity, self-detraction seems to be the
offspring of pride.

Thou art the strangest of men, Henry. Thy whole conduct with regard to
me has been a tissue of self-upbraidings. You have disclosed not only a
thousand misdeeds (as you have thought them) which could not possibly have
come to my knowledge by any other means, but have laboured to ascribe even
your commendable actions to evil or ambiguous motives. Motives are
impenetrable, and a thousand cases have occurred in which every rational
observer would have supposed you to be influenced by the best motives, but
where, if credit be due to your own representations, your motives were far
from being laudable.

Why is my esteem rather heightened than depressed by this deportment?
In truth, there is no crime which remorse will not expiate, and no more
shining virtue in the whole catalogue than sincerity. Besides, your own
account of yourself, with all the exaggerations of humility, proved you,
on the whole, and with the allowances necessarily made by every candid
person, to be a very excellent man.