All in a breath then bespoke my seriousness, and my justice:  and in this manner I delivered myself, assuming an air sincerely solemn.

’I am very sensible that the performance of the task you have put me upon will leave me without excuse:  but I will not have recourse either to evasion or palliation.

’As my cousin Charlotte has severely observed, I am not ashamed to do justice to Miss Harlowe’s merit.

’I own to you all, and, what is more, with high regret, (if not with shame, cousin Charlotte,) that I have a great deal to answer for in my usage of this lady.  The sex has not a nobler mind, nor a lovelier person of it.  And, for virtue, I could not have believed (excuse me, Ladies) that there ever was a woman who gave, or could have given, such illustrious, such uniform proofs of it:  for, in her whole conduct, she has shown herself to be equally above temptation and art; and, I had almost said, human frailty.

’The step she so freely blames herself for taking, was truly what she calls compulsatory:  for though she was provoked to think of going off with me, she intended it not, nor was provided to do so:  neither would she ever have had the thought of it, had her relations left her free, upon her offered composition to renounce the man she did not hate, in order to avoid the man she did.

’It piqued my pride, I own, that I could so little depend upon the force of those impressions which I had the vanity to hope I had made in a heart so delicate; and, in my worst devices against her, I encouraged myself that I abused no confidence; for none had she in my honour.

’The evils she has suffered, it would have been more than a miracle had she avoided.  Her watchfulness rendered more plots abortive than those which contributed to her fall; and they were many and various.  And all her greater trials and hardships were owing to her noble resistance and just resentment.

’I know, proceeded I, how much I condemn myself in the justice I am doing to this excellent creature.  But yet I will do her justice, and cannot help it if I would.  And I hope this shows that I am not so totally abandoned as I have been thought to be.

’Indeed, with me, she has done more honour to her sex in her fall, if it be to be called a fall, (in truth it ought not,) than ever any other could do in her standing.

’When, at length, I had given her watchful virtue cause of suspicion, I was then indeed obliged to make use of power and art to prevent her escaping from me.  She then formed contrivances to elude mine; but all her’s were such as strict truth and punctilious honour would justify.  She could not stoop to deceit and falsehood, no, not to save herself.  More than once justly did she tell me, fired by conscious worthiness, that her soul was my soul’s superior!—­Forgive me, Ladies, for saying, that till I knew her, I questioned a soul in a sex, created, as I was willing to suppose, only for temporary purposes.—­It is not to be imagined into what absurdities men of free principle run in order to justify to themselves their free practices; and to make a religion to their minds:  and yet, in this respect, I have not been so faulty as some others.