I would feign to die; my contented heirs would seize upon my wealth, and I should purchase freedom.  But then my plan must be laid with art; I would not be left destitute, I must secure some money.  Alas! to what loathsome shifts must I be driven?  Yet a whole life of falsehood was otherwise my portion:  and when remorse at being the contriver of any cheat made me shrink from my design I was irresistably led back and confirmed in it by the visit of some aunt or cousin, who would tell me that death was the end of all men.  And then say that my father had surely lost his wits ever since my mother’s death; that he was mad and that I was fortunate, for in one of his fits he might have killed me instead of destroying his own crazed being.  And all this, to be sure, was delicately put; not in broad words for my feelings might be hurt but

    Whispered so and so
    In dark hint soft and low[E][46]

with downcast eyes, and sympathizing smiles or whimpers; and I listened with quiet countenance while every nerve trembled; I that dared not utter aye or no to all this blasphemy.  Oh, this was a delicious life quite void of guile!  I with my dove’s look and fox’s heart:  for indeed I felt only the degradation of falsehood, and not any sacred sentiment of conscious innocence that might redeem it.  I who had before clothed myself in the bright garb of sincerity must now borrow one of divers colours:  it might sit awkwardly at first, but use would enable me to place it in elegant folds, to lie with grace.  Aye, I might die my soul with falsehood untill I had quite hid its native colour.  Oh, beloved father!  Accept the pure heart of your unhappy daughter; permit me to join you unspotted as I was or you will not recognize my altered semblance.  As grief might change Constance[47] so would deceit change me untill in heaven you would say, “This is not my child”—­My father, to be happy both now and when again we meet I must fly from all this life which is mockery to one like me.  In solitude only shall I be myself; in solitude I shall be thine.

Alas!  I even now look back with disgust at my artifices and contrivances by which, after many painful struggles, I effected my retreat.  I might enter into a long detail of the means I used, first to secure myself a slight maintenance for the remainder of my life, and afterwards to ensure the conviction of my death:  I might, but I will not.  I even now blush at the falsehoods I uttered; my heart sickens:  I will leave this complication of what I hope I may in a manner call innocent deceit to be imagined by the reader.  The remembrance haunts me like a crime—­I know that if I were to endeavour to relate it my tale would at length remain unfinished.[48] I was led to London, and had to endure for some weeks cold looks, cold words and colder consolations:  but I escaped; they tried to bind me with fetters that they thought silken, yet which weighed on me like iron, although I broke them more easily than a girth formed of a single straw and fled to freedom.