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.

98 JANE TALBOT.
to your mamma) involved in a continued series of falsehoods and frauds.
She offers this immense gift to you, on no condition but
a mere verbal promise to break off intercourse with the
man you love, and with whom you have been actually
criminal.
She seems not aware how easily promises are made
that are not designed to be performed; how absurd it
would be to rely upon your integrity in this respect, when
you have shown yourself (so it must appear to her) grossly
defective in others of infinitely greater moment. How
easily might a heart like yours be persuaded to recall its
promises, or violate this condition, as soon as the performance of her contract has made you independent of her
and of the world!
You promise-it is done in half a dozen syllables-that
you will see the hated Colden no more. All that you
promise, you intend. To-morrow she enriches you with
half her fortune. Next day the seducer comes, and may
surely expect to prevail on you to forget this promise, since
he has conquered your firmness in a case of unspeakably
greater importance.
This offer of hers surely indicates not only love for
you, but reverence for your good faith inconsistent with
the horrid imputation she has urged against you.
As to me, what a portrait does her letter exhibit! And
yet this scoffer at the obligation of a promise is offered
four or five thousand dollars on condition that he plights
his word to embark for England and to give up all his
hopes of you.
Villain as he is; a villain not by habit or by passion,
but by principle; a cool-blooded, systematic villain; yet
she will give him affluence and the means of depraving
thousands by his example and his rhetoric, on condition
that he refuses to marry the woman whom he has made
an adulteress; who has imbibed, from the contagion of
his discourse, all the practical and speculative turpitude
which he has to impart.
This conduct might be considered only as proving her
aversion to me. So strong is it as to impel her to indiscreet and self-destructive expedients; and so I should