The novels of Charles Brockden Brown, consisting of Wieland;or, The transformation. Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the year 1793. Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a sleep-walker. Jane Talbot. Ormond; or, The secret witness. Clara Howard; or, The enthusiasm of love. With a memoir of the author.

140 JANE TALBOT.
There is a strange inconsistency and contradiction in
thy mother's conduct.
But something may surely be done to lighten her
antipathies. I may surely confute a false charge. I may
convince her of my innocence in one respect.
Yet see, my friend, the evils of which one error is the
parent. My conduct towards the poor Jessy appears to
your mother a more enormous wickedness than this imputed injustice to Talbot. The frantic indiscretion of
my correspondence with Thomson has ruined me; for he
that will commit the greater crime will not be thought to
scruple the less.
And then there is such an irresistible crowd of evidence
in favour of the accusation! When I first read Mrs.
Fielder's letter, the consciousness of my innocence gave
nme courage; but the longer I reflect upon the subject,
the more deeply I despond. My own errors will always
be powerful pleaders against me at the bar of this austere
judge.
Would to Heaven I had not yielded to your urgency!
The indecorum of compliance stared me in the face at
the time. Too easily I yielded to the enchantments of
those eyes, and the pleadings of that melting voice.
The charms of your conversation; the midnight hour
whose security was heightened by the storm that raged
without; so perfectly screened from every interruption;
and the subject we had been talking on, so affecting and
attractive to me, and so far from being exhausted, and
you so pathetically earnest in entreaty, so absolutely forbidding my departure.
And was I such a short-sighted fool as not to insist on
your retiring at the usual hour? The only thing that
could make the expedient suggested by me effectual was
that. Your Molly lying with you could avail you nothing, unless you actually passed the night in your
chamber.
As it was, no contrivance could be more unfortunate,
since it merely enabled her the more distinctly to remark
the hour when you came up. Was it three, or fouer,
when you left the parlour?
The unbosoming of souls which that night witnessed,