This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
VIVIAN GREY.
51

interest; but I have advised him to no course of action, in which his welfare is not equally consulted with my own. Indeed, if not Principle, Interest would make me act faithfully towards him, for my fortunes are bound up in his. But am I entitled—I, who can lose nothing; am I entitled to play with other men's fortunes? Am I, all this time, deceiving myself with some wretched sophistry? Am I then an intellectual Don Juan, reckless of human minds, as he was of human bodies—a spiritual libertine? But why this wild declamation? Whatever I have done, it is too late to recede; even this very moment, delay is destruction, for now, it is not a question as to the ultimate prosperity of our worldly prospects, but the immediate safety of our very bodies. Poison! Oh, God! Oh, God! Away with all fear-all repentance—all thought of past—all reckoning of future. If I am the Juan that I fancied myself, then, Heaven be praised! I have a con-