One day longer shall I remain at Barlowe Hall. I only arrived here yesterday. I may be absent a week; then I return again for a short time, to seek in solitude, a temporary recruit of spirits and resolution. Much indeed do I need them. You I have to meet. My uncle too. All who call themselves my friends: for, with this emaciated form, and mere emaciated mind, am I coming to London.
And what is my business there?—To take an everlasting leave of ye all.—To implore Sir Thomas Barlowe that he will allow me but a pat of the ample provision he has given me here, to supply nature's necessities in a foreign land.—I go abroad. Opposition and remonstrances are a feather in the balance.—I go, Montgomery, to find a grave.—Life and I are already separated!—I breathe: but I do not live!—Sleep and peace are vanished from me!—How swift are the ravages of an unhealthy mind, and who would not rejoice when the vague and fleeting scene shall have finally closed!—But a little time Montgomery and rumour will say, or perhaps some stranger affected into sympathy by my youth, will, as the least office of humanity, charge himself particularly to inform thee, that it was a sigh of resignation which liberated the agonized soul and, forever sealed the lips of
A. MURDEN
LETTER III
FROM SIBELLA VALMONT
TO
CAROLINE ASHBURN
Not write me one line!—Did you, Caroline, forbid him?—Prudence and safety required no such sacrifice!—Last night I dreamt—but why talk of dreams? When waking miseries surround us, why need we recur to those of imagination!
Tell Clement, if he meant a triumph, tell him he may congratulate himself. I would neither conceal nor deny, he has it most completely.—Here then I remain.—In full conviction that Clement has already learned a part of Mr. Valmont's lesson, I obey.—Yes: I suffer myself to be commanded into acquiescence, against which every fond affection of my soul revolts.
Tell Clement that—yet stay—ask thy heart, Sibella, that heart in which love and disappointment mingle the bitter poison which corrodes the very vitals of thy peace, whether this is not the momentary effusion of a perhaps unfounded resentment?—Tell him not, Caroline: or, if thou tellest him aught, and I do commit an error, oh may the tear which accompanies prove its atonement!