'Ungrateful man!' said she, bursting into tears of mingled grief and spite, 'to treat me thus, when I was just beginning to entertain the kindest thoughts of him! When I was ready to acknowledge the error I was guilty of, in not following his advice, and had resolved never to throw myself into such inconveniences again. 'Tis plain he never loved me, or he would not have taken so poor, so trifling, a pretence to break with me.'
Thus, for some moments, did she bewail, as it were, the ill-treatment she thought she had received from him. Then looking over the letter again, 'With what a magisterial air,' cried she, 'with what an affectation of superiority, does he conclude! "With the most friendly wishes, my humble servant!" Good lack! friendly! Let him carry his friendly wishes to those he may think will receive them as a favour!'
Upon revolving in her mind all the circumstances of her behaviour towards Mr. Trueworth, she could find nothing, except what passed at his last visit, that could give him any occasion of disgust, and even that she looked upon as a very insufficient plea for that high resentment he now expressed, much more for his resolving to throw off a passion he had a thousand and a thousand times vowed should be as lasting as his life.
The anonymous letter sent her by Miss Flora, some time since, now came fresh into her head; that passage in it which insinuated that Mr. Trueworth had no real design of marrying her, that he but trifled with her, and on the arrival of her brothers would find some pretence or other to break entirely with her, seemed now to tally exactly with his present manner of proceeding. 'The devil,' said she, 'may sometimes speak truth; Mr. Trueworth has but too well verified the words of that malicious girl; and what she herself then thought a falsehood is now confirmed by fact: yet, wherefore,' cried she, 'did he take all this pains; if he never loved me, never hoped any recompense for his dissimulation, what end could he propose by practicing it? What advantage, what pleasure, could it give him to affront the sister of his friend, and impose upon the credulity of a woman he had no design upon?' It would be endless to repeat the many contradictory surmizes which rose alternately in her distracted mind; so I shall only say, she sought, but the more she did so, the more she became incapable of fathoming, the bottom of this mysterious event.
The butler was laying the cloth in the parlour for supper when she came home; Mr. Goodman had waited for her some time, thinking she might be undressing, and now sent to desire she would come down: but she begged to be excused, said she could not eat, and then called for Nanny, who was the maid that usually attended her in her chamber, to come up and put her to bed.
This prating wench, who would always know the whole secrets of every body in the family, whether they thought fit to entrust her with them or not, used frequently to divert Miss Betsy with her idle stories: but it was not now in her power, that young lady had no attention for any thing but the object of her present meditations; which the other not happening to hit upon, was answered only with peevishness and ill-humour.
But as every little circumstance, if any was adapted to the passion we at that time are possessed of, touches upon the jarring string, and seems a missionary from fate, an accident, the most trifling that can be imagined, served to renew in Miss Betsy, the next morning, those anxieties which sleep had in some measure abated.
A ballad singer happening to be in the street, the first thing she heard, on her waking, was these words, sung in a sonorous voice, just under the window—
'Young Philander woo'd me long,
I was peevish, and forbade him;
I would not hear his charming song;
But now I wish, I wish I had him!'
Though this was a song at that time much in vogue, and Miss Betsy had casually heard it an hundred times; yet, in the humour she now was, it beat an alarm upon her heart. It reminded her how inconsiderate she had been, and shewed the folly of not knowing how to place a just value on any thing, till it was lost, in such strong colours before her eyes, as one could scarce think it possible an incident in itself so merely bagatelle could have produced.