city, and
because nothing less than my own hearing and vision would convince me,
in opposition to her own assertions, that my sister had fallen into
wickedness like this."

I threw my arms around him, and bathed his cheek with my tears. "That,"
said I, "is spoken like my brother. But what are the proofs?"

He replied--"Pleyel informed me that, in going to your house, his
attention was attracted by two voices. The persons speaking sat beneath
the bank out of sight. These persons, judging by their voices, were
Carwin and you. I will not repeat the dialogue. If my sister was the
female, Pleyel was justified in concluding you to be, indeed, one of the
most profligate of women. Hence, his accusations of you, and his efforts
to obtain my concurrence to a plan by which an eternal separation should
be brought about between my sister and this man."

I made Wieland repeat this recital. Here, indeed, was a tale to fill me
with terrible foreboding. I had vainly thought that my safety could be
sufficiently secured by doors and bars, but this is a foe from whose
grasp no power of divinity can save me! His artifices will ever lay my
fame and happiness at his mercy. How shall I counterwork his plots, or
detect his coadjutor? He has taught some vile and abandoned female to
mimic my voice. Pleyel's ears were the witnesses of my dishonor. This
is the midnight assignation to which he alluded. Thus is the silence
he maintained when attempting to open the door of my chamber, accounted
for. He supposed me absent, and meant, perhaps, had my apartment been
accessible, to leave in it some accusing memorial.

Pleyel was no longer equally culpable. The sincerity of his anguish, the
depth of his despair, I remembered with some tendencies to gratitude.
Yet was he not precipitate? Was the conjecture that my part was played
by some mimic so utterly untenable? Instances of this faculty are
common. The wickedness of Carwin must, in his opinion, have been
adequate to such contrivances, and yet the supposition of my guilt was
adopted in preference to that.

But how was this error to be unveiled? What but my own assertion had I
to throw in the balance against it? Would this be permitted to outweigh
the testimony of his senses? I had no witnesses to prove my existence
in another place. The real events of that night are marvellous. Few, to
whom they should be related, would scruple to discredit them. Pleyel is
sceptical in a transcendant degree. I canno