To the rest of the world he was unknown.

I had often made him the subject of discourse; but a glimpse of his figure in the street was the sum of their knowledge who knew most.

None had ever seen him before, and received as new, the information which my intercourse with him in Valencia, and my present intercourse, enabled me to give.
"Wieland was your brother.

If he had really made you the object of his courtship, was not a brother authorized to interfere and demand from him the confession of his views?
Yet what were the grounds on which I had reared this supposition?
Would they justify a measure like this?
Surely not.
"In the course of my restless meditations, it occurred to me, at length, that my duty required me to speak to you, to confess the indecorum of which I had been guilty, and to state the reflections to which it had led me.

I was prompted by no mean or selfish views.