doing it at table, where I examined the wine, and every dish, with an unusual care, which occasioned him to ask me whether I was afraid to be poisoned by him? Yet that very question sealed my lips. His extraordinary agitation, and the struggle with his heart, which was not yet entirely decided, imparted to every thing he said a certain bitterness which he could not conceal, notwithstanding his endeavours to appear open and kind to me. Thus frail is the human heart. I saw, with secret sorrow, the distress which the sacrifice he had made me inflicted upon his agonized mind. I might have soothed his agony, if I had explained to him that my singular behaviour on the preceding night had been owing rather to a disordered body than to a weakness of heart; however, his silent reserve, and my being doubtful how he would receive it, prevented me from coming to an explanation.
The
