I read and reread this letter a thousand times; my soul was in tumults. At first I could only think of the facts that it contained, and proudly and joyfully determined to compensate to Clinton, as I believed I could, for every evil; and then again I read the letter, and many parts of it filled me with wonder and dismay. Clinton was gone abroad—against his promise—without a word; and there was something so indelicate in the way in which my uncle espoused his cause. It was strange—unlike any conduct I had expected on my dear cousin’s part. Of course he would write—and yet he was gone, and no letter came! And then I dreaded to see Sir Richard, the wrongful, penitent father: the total indifference which he displayed to moral principle—not founded, like Vernon’s, on selfishness, but on weakness
