“And yet you keep his company! Oh! Rosalie, I am surprised.”
“Is it not right, mamma?”
“What a simple question! Oh, child! if it were not you, I should say it is unprincipled!”
“Mamma, you distress and alarm me! Why must I not keep poor Robert’s company, when he takes so much comfort in my society?”
“Comfort! Does he take comfort—do you call it comfort? No, Rosalie, it is a feverish, consuming hope that keeps him at your side; a wasting, baleful hope, which, since you do not intend to realize to him, it is your bounden duty to extinguish forever!”
“Mamma! I do not quite understand you. I am sorry, very sorry, that I cannot return Robert’s regard”——
“Oh!” exclaimed the lady, interrupting her, “I am not sorry for that: as to that, I am very glad you are not engaged to him, nor ever likely to be; but”——
“But why add to the grief of rejection the bitterness of ingratitude and coldness?”
“To refuse his attentions, to deny him your company, would not be either the one or the other, and it is your duty.”
“When poor Robert has no consolation in the world but my company”——