LETTER V
FROM ARTHUR MURDEN
TO
CAROLINE ASHBURN
When friendship and advice can no longer avail him, Murden intreats a patient ear to the history of his misfortunes.
Intreat! Did he say?—No, Madam; he intreats nothing of you: he demands your ear, demands your attention, your sighs, your sorrow: and little indeed is that, though your all of reparation, for the mischievous eloquence, which first instigated him to become the poor valueless object of pity, sighs, and sorrow.
To tell you that I love Sibella Valmont, is no more than Montgomery will tell you. But he loves her, in his way.—I, in mine. When present, her supreme and every varying beauty, makes his rapture; and, till he has been a day without her, he imagines absence would be insupportable.—Absent or present, alike she fills my every vein. I love her, Miss Ashburn, as—oh misery!—as she loves Clement!
Judge me not so absurd as to entertain hope, although I tell you I am again returned to the hermit's cell. Offer hope in its most seducing form; and still would I renounce it. Yes, Madam: possession of Sibella, were I an atom less to her than she is to me, must inflict torture worse than the present.
Nor deem, that I would dare assail her ears with my unauspicious love. I have spoken in mystery; and she thinks I mourn a buried mistress.—Alas! and so I do!
Montgomery, what dost thou owe me? Yet 'twas not thee I meant to serve; therefore thou owest me nothing. Thou canst find happiness any where: but, in the circle of thy arms and heart, centres the full measure of Sibella's wishes.
I would almost, Miss Ashburn, as soon have rushed into the fire, as again sustained the chilling beam of her eye. Yet I have come hither again, have endured this and more, to check the carniverous meal of anxiety already begun on her cheek's bloom.