'I confess it all,' said he, 'I am not more wretched than desperate. This marriage is my resource from worse evils. Oh, Miss Ashburn! by that benignity which irradiates your every action I conjure you suffer it to proceed!—I will be grateful.—I will honor and revere your mother.—More I cannot promise—I cannot. Allow me to depart, madam, I cannot endure to be questioned.'
And thus saying, he would have quitted the room, had I not held him by the arm, and with difficulty prevailed on him again to take his seat, and to listen to me patiently while I pourtrayed the evils of such a marriage, and the cruel injustice he was guilty of towards a woman so chosen.
'I know all that,' replied Davenport. 'I have foreseen it a thousand and a thousand times. I know I am a villain; but Mrs. Ashburn shall never suspect me. I will be the obedient slave of her will. She shall mould me to whatever shape her pleasure inclines. I will be more docile than infancy. I will forego my very nature, at her command.'
'But you have not foreseen, Mr. Davenport, that the time must arrive when her volatility and incessant eagerness after pleasure will cease to relieve you. It is in the hours of age and infirmity that she will call on you for aid, will seek in your soothing voice, in your cheering smile a relief from pain: and how will you perform your task in those multiplied moments? My mother does not want discernment: and what will be your torture to see her dying perhaps under the agonizing reflection that the man on whose honour she relied, on whose faith and sincerity her hopes had towered to felicity, that, her husband had deceived her, perhaps had loved another.'
He became pale as death. I continued. 'But you shall not hasten to this destruction. I will prevent this marriage.'
'Miss Ashburn, for heaven's sake!' cried he: 'I have no other means—I must—marry.'
I took hold of his hand, for he trembled. 'I wish to be your friend, Mr. Davenport; indeed I am your friend, at this moment; it is far from my intention to tear from you this fallacious hope, without placing some certain and honourable advantage in its stead. Let me know your history. Neither conceal from me your wants nor your feelings, nor the situations they have throw you into; and I will undertake to do you every service that reason and humanity suggest.'
He attempted in vain to answer. Throwing himself back in the chair, he covered his face with an handkerchief, and shed tears.
I believe it was near a quarter of an hour ere he recovered from his agitation, and was able to speak as follows.
'My father was himself so enamoured of pomp that, although he allowed me, an only son, to share the magnificence of his town residence, yet he confined my sisters with their governess and two servants to a small house he possessed in a cheap country. I saw them only once a year; and the solitude of their abode was so irksome to me, that I was always eager to quit and unwilling to return at the usual period. However, about the time I was to set out on my travels, it was judged decent and necessary that I should pay them a visit of unusual length, as they were now almost women; and to my great surprise I found their old governess removed, and a young person with them as companion whom alas I did love to distraction.