If this be true augury; your last letter may be considered as ominous of my breaking down.

Methinks, you have gone far enough, and shared deep enough with me, to have some confidence in my _savoir faire_--some little faith both in my means and management.

What crossgrained fiend has at once inspired you with what I suppose you wish me to call politic doubts and scruples of conscience, but which I can only regard as symptoms of fear and disaffection?
You can have no idea of 'duels betwixt relations so nearly connected'-- and 'the affair seems very delicate and intricate'-- and again, 'the matter has never been fully explained to you'-- and, moreover, 'if you are expected to take an active part in the business, it must be when you are honoured with my full and unreserved confidence, otherwise how could you be of the use to me which I might require ?' Such are your expressions.
"Now, as to scruples of conscience about near relations, and so forth, all that has blown by without much mischief, and certainly is not likely to occur again--besides, did you never hear of friends quarrelling before?
And are they not to exercise the usual privileges of gentlemen when they do?
Moreover, how am I to know that this plaguy fellow _is_ actually related to me ?--They say it is a wise child knows its own father; and I cannot be expected wise enough to know to a certainty my father's son .-- So much for relationship .-- Then, as to full and unreserved confidence--why, Harry, this is just as if I were to ask you to look at a watch, and tell what it was o'clock, and you were to reply, that truly you could not inform me, because you had not examined the springs, the counter-balances, the wheels, and the whole internal machinery of the little timepiece .-- But the upshot of the whole is this.

Harry Jekyl, who is as sharp a fellow as any other, thinks he has his friend Lord Etherington at a dead lock, and that he knows already so much of the said noble lord's history as to oblige his lordship to tell him the whole.

And perhaps he not unreasonably concludes, that the custody of a whole secret is more creditable, and probably more lucrative, than that of a half one; and, in short,--he is resolved to make the most of the cards in his hand.