I now see, and bitterly regret my error,
yet deem it better to make this painful confession than suffer you
to remain in a delusion which may involve your happiness in the
wreck of mine. I am most faithfully your friend,

"Emily Bingham."

What a charming girl she is, I cried, as I finished the letter; how full
of true feeling, how honourably, how straight-forward: and yet it is
devilish strange how cunningly she played her part--and it seems now that
I never did touch her affections; Master Harry, I begin to fear you are
not altogether the awful lady-killer you have been thinking. Thus did I
meditate upon this singular note--my delight at being once more "free"
mingling with some chagrin that I was jockied, and by a young miss of
eighteen, too. Confoundedly disagreeable if the mess knew it, thought I.
Per Baccho--how they would quiz upon my difficulty to break off a match,
when the lady was only anxious to get rid of me.

This affair must never come to their ears, or I am ruined; and now, the
sooner all negociations are concluded the better. I must obtain a
meeting with Emily. Acknowledge the truth and justice of all her views,
express my deep regret at the issue of the affair, slily hint that I have
been merely playing her own game back upon her; for it would be the devil
to let her go off with the idea that she had singed me, yet never caught
fire herself; so that we both shall draw stakes, and part friends.

This valiant resolution taken, I wrote a very short note, begging an
interview, and proceeded to make as formidable a toilet as I could for
the forthcoming meeting; before I had concluded which, a verbal answer by
her maid informed me, that "Miss Bingham was alone, and ready to receive
me."

As I took my way along the corridor, I could not help feeling that among
all my singular scrapes and embarassing situations through life, my
present mission was certainly not the least--the difficulty, such as it
was, being considerably increased by my own confounded "amour propre,"
that would not leave me satisfied with obtaining my liberty, if I could
not insist upon coming off scathless also. In fact, I was not content to
evacuate the fortress, if I were not to march out with all the honours of
war. This feeling I neither attempt to palliate nor defend, I merely
chronicle it as, are too many of these confessions, a matter of truth,
yet not the less a subje