“Unluckily, with the morrow of this happy day a letter came from my son’s tutor, the life of the child so dear to me was in danger.  I went away without confiding my secret to Evelina, merely telling her family that I was urgently required in Paris.  Her parents took alarm during my absence.  They feared that there I was entangled in some way, and wrote to Paris to make inquiries about me.  It was scarcely consistent with their religious principles; but they suspected me, and did not even give me an opportunity of clearing myself.

“One of their friends, without my knowledge, gave them the whole history of my youth, blackening my errors, laying stress upon the existence of my child, which (said they) I intended to conceal.  I wrote to my future parents, but I received no answers to my letters; and when they came back to Paris, and I called at their house, I was not admitted.  Much alarmed, I sent to my old friend to learn the reason of this conduct on their part, which I did not in the least understand.  As soon as the good soul knew the real cause of it all, he sacrificed himself generously, took upon himself all the blame of my reserve, and tried to exculpate me, but all to no purpose.  Questions of interest and morality were regarded so seriously by the family, their prejudices were so firmly and deeply rooted, that they never swerved from their resolution.  My despair was overwhelming.  At first I tried to deprecate their wrath, but my letters were sent back to me unopened.  When every possible means had been tried in vain; when her father and mother had plainly told my old friend (the cause of my misfortune) that they would never consent to their daughter’s marriage with a man who had upon his conscience the death of a woman and the life of a natural son, even though Evelina herself should implore them upon her knees; then, sir, there only remained to me one last hope, a hope as slender and fragile as the willow-branch at which a drowning wretch catches to save himself.

“I ventured to think that Evelina’s love would be stronger than her father’s scruples, that her inflexible parents might yield to her entreaties.  Perhaps, who knows, her father had kept from her the reasons of the refusal, which was so fatal to our love.  I determined to acquaint her with all the circumstances, and to make a final appeal to her; and in fear and trembling, in grief and tears, my first and last love-letter was written.  To-day I can only dimly remember the words dictated to me by my despair; but I must have told Evelina that if she had dealt sincerely with me she could not and ought not to love another, or how could her whole life be anything but a lie? she must be false either to her future husband or to me.  Could she refuse to the lover, who had been so misjudged and hardly entreated, the devotion which she would have shown him as her husband, if the marriage which had already taken place in our hearts had been outwardly solemnized?  Was not this to