And I am sure that, since I ask it, you will not betray
(or, by any act or disclosure, imperil or hamper) the messenger
who brings this at risk of his life; for the matter is a private
one.
"Pondering upon all that has occurred, I am put in a fear of your
forgetting whose right it is to avenge it, and of your taking
that duty to yourself, which belongs by every consideration to
me. This is to beg, therefore, that you will not forestall me;
that while I live you will leave this matter to me, at whatsoever
cost though it be to your pride and your impatience. Dear Bert, I
enjoin you, do not usurp my prerogative. By all the ties between
us, past and to come, I demand this of you. _The man is mine to
kill_. Let him wait my time, and I shall be the more, what I long
have been, Ever thine,
"PHILIP."
I thought over it for a full minute. He asked of me a grievous
disappointment; nay, something of a humiliation, too, so highly had I
carried myself, so triumphant had my enemy Chubb become in
anticipation, so derisive would he be in case of my withdrawal.
If I receded, Chubb would have ground to think the message a device to
get me out of a peril at the last moment, after I had pretended to
face it so intrepidly thereunto. For I could not say what my letter
contained, or who it was from, without betraying Meadows and perhaps
Mr.
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