It was to a priest rather than to a man that he made full confession of his grievous sin.

He did not attempt to mitigate it or to throw upon another a share of the blame.

From that attitude he did not vary a hair's breadth.

Mea culpa; mea maxima culpa.

That was the burthen of his avowal.
I, knowing the strange mingling in his nature of brutality and sensitiveness, of animal and spiritual, and knowing something of the unstable character of Althea Fenimore, may more justly, I think, than he, sketch out the miserable prologue of the drama.