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.

202 JANE TALBOT.
will feel an emotion of joy that I have not been quite as
guilty as you had reason to believe.
Give me leave, madam, to anticipate that moment. The
number of my consolations are few. Your enmity I rank
among my chief misfortunes, and the more so because I
deserve much, though not all your enmity. The persuasion that the time will come when you will acquit me of
this charge, is, even now, a comforter. This is more desirable to me, since it will relieve your daughter from
one among the many evils in which she has been involved
by the vices and infirmities of I. COLDEN.
LETTER LIII.
To James Jlfontford.
Philadelphia, December 17.
I SOUGHT relief a second time to my drooping heart, by
a walk in the fields. Returning, I met Harriet Thomson
in the street. The meeting was somewhat unexpected.
Since we parted at Baltimore, I imagined she had returned to her old habitation in Jersey. I knew she was
pretty much a stranger in this city. Night had already
come on, and she was alone. She greeted me with visible
satisfaction; and, though I was very little fit for society,
especially of those who loved me not, I thought common
civility required me to attend her home.
I never say/ this woman till I met her lately at her
brother's bedside. Her opinions of me were all derived
from unfavourable sources, and I knew, from good authority, that she regarded me as a dangerous and hateful
character. I had even, accidentally, heard her opinion
of the affair between Jane and me. Jane was severely
censured for credulity and indiscretion, but some excuse
was allowed to her on, the score of the greater guilt that
was placed to my account.
Her behaviour, when we first met, was somewhat conformable to these impressions. A good deal of coldness
and reserve in her deportment, which I was sometimes
sorry for, as she seems an estimable creature; meek, affec