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 long since,—perhaps,—have confided in your liberality and benevolence: but now, 'tis wholly impossible!"

"No!" exclaimed he, warmly, and touched to the soul; "nothing is impossible that you wish to effect! Hear me, then, trust and speak to me as a friend; a faithful, a cordial, a disinterested friend! Confide to me your name—your situation—the motives to your concealment—the causes that can induce such mystery of appearance, in one whose mind is so evidently the seat of the clearest purity:—the reasons of such disguise—"

"Disguise, I acknowledge, Sir, you may charge me with; but not deceit! I give no false colouring. I am only not open."

"That, that is what first struck me as a mark of a distinguished character! That noble superiority to all petty artifices, even for your immediate safety; that undoubting innocence, that framed no precautions against evil constructions;