LETTER CXVIII.120.
To Miss Fermor.
Quebec, Thursday morning.
Do you think, my dear, that Madame Des Roches has heard from Rivers? I wish you would ask her this afternoon at the governor’s: I am anxious to know, but ashamed to enquire.
Not, my dear, that I have the weakness to be jealous; but I shall think his letter to me a higher compliment, if I know he writes to nobody else. I extremely approve his friendship for Madame Des Roches; she is very amiable, and certainly deserves it: but you know, Bell, it would be cruel to encourage an affection, which she must conquer, or be unhappy: if she did not love him, there would be nothing wrong in his writing to her; but, as she does, it would be doing her the greatest injury possible: ’tis as much on her account as my own I am thus anxious.
Did you ever read so tender, yet so lively a letter as Rivers’s to me? he is alike in all: there is in his letters, as in his conversation,
“All that can softly win, or gaily charm
The heart of woman.”
Even strangers listen to him with an involuntary attention, and hear him with a pleasure for which they scarce know how to account.
He charms even without intending it, and in spite of himself; but when he wishes to please, when he addresses the woman he loves, when his eyes speak the soft language of his heart, when your Emily reads in them the dear confession of his tenderness, when that melodious voice utters the sentiments of the noblest mind that ever animated a human form—My dearest, the eloquence of angels cannot paint my Rivers as he is.
I am almost inclined not to go to the governor’s to-night; I am determined not to dance till Rivers returns, and I know there are too many who will be ready to make observations on my refusal: I think I will stay at home, and write to him against Monday’s post: I have a thousand things to say, and you know we are continually interrupted at Quebec; I shall have this evening to myself, as all the world will be at the governor’s.
Adieu, your faithful
Emily Montague.