, kissing her hand with more
fervour than I expected from myself.

"Do me then the favour to excuse me one minute." She left the room, and
in a very short time, there returned, in the same dress, and in every
other point the same person, but with a young and lively face of not
more, apparently, than twenty-two or twenty-three years old. I started
as if I had seen an apparition. "Yes," said she, smiling, "you now see
Aramathea Judd without disguise; and you are the first who has seen that
face for more than two years. Before I proceed further, again I say,
may I trust you--swear!"

"I do swear," replied I, and took her hand for the book, which this time
I kissed with pleasure, over and over again. Like a young jackass as I
was, I still retained her hand, throwing as much persuasion as I
possibly could in my eyes. In fact, I did enough to have softened the
hearts of three bonnet-makers. I began to feel most dreadfully in love,
and thought of marriage, and making my fortune, and I don't know what;
but all this was put an end to by one simple short sentence, delivered
in a very decided but soft voice, "Japhet, don't be silly."

I was crushed, and all my hopes crushed with me. I dropped her hand,
and sat like a fool.

"And now hear me. I am, as you must have already found out, an
impostor; that is, I am what is called a religious adventuress--a new
term, I grant, and perhaps only applicable to a very few. My aunt was
considered, by a certain sect, to be a great prophetess, which I hardly
need tell you was all nonsense; nevertheless, there are hundreds who
believed in her, and do so now. Brought up with my aunt, I soon found
out what fools and dupes may be made of mankind by taking advantage of
their credulity. She had her religious inspirations, her trances, and
her convulsions, and I was always behind the scenes; she confided in me,
and I may say that I was her only confidant. You cannot, therefore,
wonder at my practising that deceit to which I have been brought up from
almost my infancy. In person I am the exact counterpart of what my aunt
was at my age, equally so in figure, although my figure is now disguised
to resemble that of a woman of her age. I often had dressed myself in
my aunt's clothes, put on her cap and front, and then the resemblance
was very striking. My aunt fell sick and died, but she promised the
disciples that she would re-appear to them, and they believed her. I
did not. She was