"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."

This last sentence delicately recalled the scene at the inn, and the
circumstances of my first introduction. The defence was not bad; it
wanted but one simple ingredient to have made it excellent--I mean
truth; but the court being strongly biassed in favour of the prisoner,
I was acquitted, and at the same time, "admonished to be more careful
in future." The