I own, Grandison, you disconcerted me. I had intended to save you that
journey.
Was that your lordship's meaning, when, in my absence, you called at my
lodgings, the day after the farewell-visit?
Not absolutely: I was uneasy with myself. I intended to talk to you.
What that talk might have produced, I know not: but had I invited you
out, if I had found you at home, would you have answered my demands?
According as you had put them.
Will you answer them now, if I attend you as far as Rome, on your return
to Florence?
If they are demands fit to be answered.
Do you expect I will make any that are not fit to be answered?
My lord, I will explain myself. You had conceived causeless prejudices
against me: you seemed inclined to impute to me a misfortune that was
not, could not be, greater to you than it was to me. I knew my own
innocence: I knew that I was rather an injured man, in having hopes given
me, in which I was disappointed, not by my own fault: whom shall an
innocent and an injured man fear?--Had I feared, my fear might have been
my destruction. For was I not in the midst of your friends? A
foreigner? If I would have avoided you, could I, had you been determined
to seek me?--I would choose to meet even an enemy as a man of honour,
rather than to avoid him as a malefactor. In my country, the law
supposes flight a confession of guilt.
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