The things we do!

"It is
myself, not you, I doubt. Oh, I am humiliated to make such a confession!"
"How humiliated?" Ethel withdrew the hand which the young nobleman
endeavoured to seize.
"If," she continued, "if I found it was your birth, and your name, and
your wealth that I coveted, and had nearly taken, ought I not to feel
humiliated, and ask pardon of you and of God? Oh, what perjuries poor
Clara was made to speak,--and see what has befallen her! We stood by and
heard her without being shocked. We applauded even. And to what shame and
misery we brought her! Why did her parents and mine consign her to such
ruin! She might have lived pure and happy but for us. With her example
before me--not her flight, poor child--I am not afraid of that happening
to me--but her long solitude, the misery of her wasted years,--my
brother's own wretchedness and faults aggravated a hundredfold by his
unhappy union with her--I must pause while it is yet time, and recall a
promise which I know I should make you unhappy if I fulfilled.


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