'I do indeed think very highly of you.—I cannot, if I would, deny it.'
'And you allow me, then, to go instantly to Lord Montreville?'
'Oh! no! no!—surely nothing I have said implied such a consent.'
Godolphin, however, was still pressing; and at length brought her to confess, with blushes, and even with tears, her early and long partiality for him, and her resolution either to be his, or die unmarried. She found, indeed, all attempts to dissimulate, vain: the reserve she had forced herself to assume, gave way to her natural frankness; and having once been induced to make such an acknowledgment of the state of her heart, she determined to have no longer any secrets concealed from him who was it's master.
She therefore candidly told him how great was her compassion for Lord Delamere, and how severe her apprehensions of his rage, resentment and despair.
He allowed the force of the first; but as to the other, he would not suppose it a reason for her delaying her marriage.
'Poor Delamere,' said he, 'is of a temper which opposition and difficulty renders more eager and more obstinate. Yet when you are for ever out of his reach; as the obstacle will become invincible, he must yield to necessity. While you remain single, he will still hope. The greatest kindness, therefore, that you can do him, will be to convince him that he has nothing to expect from you; and put an end at once to the uncertainty which tortures him.'
'To drive him to despair? Ah! I know so well the dreadful force of his passions, and the excesses he is capable of committing when under their influence, that I dare not, I positively will not, risk it. I love Delamere as my brother; I love him for the resemblance he is said to bear to my father. I pity him for the errors which the natural impetuosity of his temper, inflamed by the unbounded indulgence of his mother, continually leads him into; and the misfortunes these causes are so frequently inflicting on him; and should his fatal inclination for me, be the means of bringing on himself and on his family yet other miseries, I should never forgive myself; or him by whose means they were incurred.'
'From me, at least, you have nothing of that sort to apprehend: I truly pity Delamere; I feel what it must be to have relinquished the woman he loves; and to find her lost to his hopes, while his passion is unabated:—be assured my compassion for him will induce me rather to soothe his unhappiness than to insult him with an ostentatious display of my enviable fortune. Yet if you suffer me to believe my attachment not disagreeable to you, how shall I wholly conceal it? how appear as not daring to avow that, which is the glory and happiness of my life? and by your being supposed disengaged and indifferent, see you exposed to the importunities of an infinite number of suitors, who, however inconsequential they may be to you, will torment me. I do not know that I have much of jealousy in my nature; yet I cannot tell how I shall bear to see Delamere presuming again on your former friendship for him.—Even the volatile and thoughtless Bellozane has the power to make me uneasy, when I see him so persuaded of his own merit, and so confident of success.'