In a moment the mystery was unravelled, and conviction flashed in my face like the priming of a musket.  Guilty, and convicted on the clearest evidence, I had nothing left for it, but to throw myself on her mercy; but while I stood undecided, and unknowing what to do, Mr Somerville entered, and welcomed me with kind, but cool hospitality.  Seeing Emily in tears, and my father’s letter in her hand, he knew that an eclaircissement had taken place, or was in progress.  In this situation, candour, and an honest confession that I felt a mauvaise honte in disclosing my passion to my father would undoubtedly have been my safest course; but my right trusty friend, the devil, stepped in to my assistance, and suggested deceit, or a continuation of that chain by which he had long since bound me, and not one link of which he took care should ever be broken; and fortunately for me, this plan answered, at the time, better than candour.

“I must acknowledge, sir,” said I, “that appearances are against me.  I can only trust to your patient hearing, while I state the real facts.  Allow me first to say, that my father’s observations are hardly warranted by the conversation which took place; and if you will please, in the first place, to consider that that very conversation originated in my expressing a wish and intention of coming down to see you, and to produce to your daughter the memento so carefully guarded during my long absence, you must perceive that there is an incongruity in my conduct, difficult to explain; but still, through all these mazes and windings, I trust that truth and constancy will be found at the bottom.  You may probably laugh at the idea, but I really felt jealous of my father’s praises so lavishly bestowed on Miss Somerville; and not supposing he was aware of my attachment, I began to fear he had pretensions of his own.  He is a widower, healthy, and not old; and it appeared to me that he only wanted my admiration to justify his choice of a step-mother for myself and sister.  Thus, between love for Miss Somerville, and respect for my father, I scarcely knew how to act.  That I should for one moment have felt jealous of my father, I now acknowledge with shame:  yet labouring under the erroneous supposition of his attachment to an object which had been the only one of my adoration, I could not make up my mind to a disclosure, which I feared would have renewed our differences, and produced the most insuperable bars to our future reconciliation.  This thought burned in my brain, and urged the speed of the jaded post-horses.  If you will examine the drivers, they will tell you, that the whole way from town, they have been stimulated by the rapping of a Spanish dollar on the glass of the chaise.  I dreaded my father getting the start of me; and busy fancy painted him, to my heated imagination, kneeling at the feet of my beloved Emily.  Condemn me not, therefore, too harshly; only allow me the same lenient judgment which you exercised when I first had the pleasure of making your acquaintance.”