“I have been rash and cruel, Miss Fairman, but extend to me your pardon, and I will go for ever, and disturb your peace no more.  Do not despise me, or believe that I have deliberately interfered with your happiness, and destroyed my own for ever.  Do not hate me when I shall see you no more.”

“Leave me, Mr. Stukely, I entreat,” sobbed Miss Fairman, weeping amain.  Her hand fell.  I was inflamed with passion, and I became indifferent to the claims of duty, which were drowned in the louder clamours of love.  I seized that hand and held it firm.  It needed not, for the lady sought not to withdraw it.

“I am not indifferent to you, dearest Miss Fairman,” I exclaimed; “you do not hate me—­you do not despise me—­I am sure you do not.  That drawing has revealed to me all that I wish or care to know.  I would rather die this moment possessed of that knowledge, than live a monarch without it.”

“Leave me, leave me, I implore you,” faltered Miss Fairman.

“Yes, dearest lady, I must—­I shall leave you.  I can stay no longer here.  Life is valueless now.  I have permitted a raging fire to consume me.  I have indulged, madly and fearfully indulged, in error.  I have struggled against the temptation.  Heaven has willed that I should not escape it.  I have learnt that you love me—­come what may, I am content.”

“If you regard me, Mr. Stukely, pity me, and go, now.  I beg, I entreat you to leave me.”

I raised the quivering hand, and kissed it ardently.  I resigned it, and departed.

My whole youth was a succession of inconsiderate yieldings to passion, and of hasty visitings of remorse.  It is not a matter of surprise that I hated myself for every word that I had spoken as soon as I was again master of my conduct.  It was my nature to fall into error against conviction and my cool reason, and to experience speedily the reaction that succeeds the commission of exorbitant crimes.  In proportion to the facility with which I erred, was the extravagance and exaggeration with which I viewed my faults.  During the predominance of a passion, death, surrounded by its terrors, would not have frighted me or driven me back—­would not have received my passing notice; whilst it lasted it prevailed.  So, afterwards, when all was calm and over, a crushing sense of wrong and guilt magnified the smallest offence, until it grew into a bugbear to scare me night and day.  Leaving Miss Fairman, I rushed into the garden, preparatory to running away from the parsonage altogether.  This, in the height of remorseful excitement, presented itself to my mind forcibly as the necessary and only available step to adopt; but this soon came to be regarded as open to numerous and powerful objections.