Why should I prolong, by hypocrisy or silence, his misery as well as my own?
Why not deal with him explicitly, and assure him of the truth?
You will hardly believe that, in obedience to this suggestion, I rose for the purpose of ordering a light, that I might instantly make this confession in a letter.

A second thought shewed me the rashness of this scheme, and I wondered by what infirmity of mind I could be betrayed into a momentary approbation of it.

I saw with the utmost clearness that a confession like that would be the most remediless and unpardonable outrage upon the dignity of my sex, and utterly unworthy of that passion which controuled me.
I resumed my seat and my musing.

To account for the absence of Pleyel became once more the scope of my conjectures.

How many incidents might occur to raise an insuperable impediment in his way?
When I was a child, a scheme of pleasure, in which he and his sister were parties, had been, in like manner, frustrated by his absence; but his absence, in that instance, had been occasioned by his falling from a boat into the river, in consequence of which he had run the most imminent hazard of being drowned.