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.

THE SECRET WITNESS.

241

are conjoined by links imperceptible to keenest eyes.
Of Ormond's. means of information she was wholly unapprized. Perhaps accident would some time unfold
them. One thing was incontestable:-that her schemes
and her reasons for adopting them were known to him.
What unforeseen effects had that knowledge produced!
In what ambiguous terms had he couched his prognostics
of some mighty evil that awaited her! He had given a
terrible but contradictory description of her destiny. An
event was to happen, akin to no calamity which she had
already endured, disconnected with all which the imagination of man is accustomed to deprecate, capable of
urging her to suicide, and yet of a kind which left it undecided whether she would regard it with indifference.
What reliance should she place upon prophetic incoherences thus wild? What precautions should she take
against a danger thus inscrutable and imminent?
CHAPTER XXVII.
THESE incidents and reflections were speedily transmitted to me. I had always believed the character and
machinations of Ormond to be worthy of caution and
fear. His means of information I did not pretend, and
thought it useless, to investigate. We cannot hide our
actions and thoughts from one of powerful sagacity,
whom the detection sufficiently interests to make him
use all the methods of detection in his power. The
study of concealment is, in all cases, fruitless or hurtful.
All that duty enjoins is to design and to execute nothing
which may not be approved by a divine and omniscient
Observer. Human scrutiny is neither to be solicited nor
shunned. Human approbation or censure can never be
exempt from injustice, because our limited perceptions
debar us from a thorough knowledge of any actions and
motives but our own.
On reviewing what had passed between Constantia
and me, I recollected nothing incompatible with purity
21