"
[Note.--It is quite needless for me to dwell here on the devilish
cunning--I can use no other phrase--which inspired this abominable
letter. Look back to the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth chapters, and
you will see how skillfully what I said in a moment of foolish
irritation, and what Lucilla said when she too had lost her temper, is
turned to account to poison her mind against me. We are made innocently
to supply our enemy with the foundation on which he builds his plot. For
the rest, the letter explains itself. Nugent still persists in
personating his brother. He guesses easily at the excuse I should make to
Lucilla for his absence; and he gets over the difficulty of appearing to
have confided his errand to a woman whom he distrusts, by declaring that
he felt it necessary to deceive me as to what the nature of that errand
really was. As the Journal proceeds, you will see how dexterously he
works the machinery which his letter has set in motion. All I need add
here, in the way of explanation, is--that the delay in his arrival at
Ramsgate of which Lucilla complains, was caused by nothing but his own
hesitation. His sense of honor--as I knew, from discoveries made at a
later time--was not entirely lost yet. The lower he sank, the harder his
better nature struggled to raise him. Nothing, positively nothing, but
his own remorse need have kept him at Paris (it is needless to say that
he never stirred farther, and never discovered the place of his brother's
retreat) after Lucilla had informed him by letter, that I had gone
abroad, and that she was at Ramsgate with her aunt.
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