'To try to make your peace with her brother; or at least to nurse him herself till he is tolerably recovered.'
Lionel slapped his hat over his eyes, and saying, 'This is too much!—if I were a man I should shoot myself!'—rushed out of the room.
The two sisters rapidly followed him, and caught his arm before he could quit the house. They earnestly besought him to return, to compose himself, and to promise he would commit no rash action.
'My dear sisters,' cried he, 'I am worked just now only as I ought to be; but I will give you any promise you please. However, though I have never listened to my father as I ought to have listened, he has implanted in my mind a horror of suicide, that will make me live my natural life, be it as good for nothing as it may.'
He then suffered his sisters to lead him back to their room, where he cast himself upon a chair, in painful rumination upon his own unworthiness, and his parents' excellence; but the tender soothings of Lavinia and Camilla, who trembled lest his remorse should urge him to some act of violence, soon drew him from reflections of which he hated the intrusion; and he attended, with complacency, to their youthful security of perfect reconciliations, and re-established happiness.
With reciprocal exultation, the eyes of the sisters congratulated each other on having saved him from despair: and seeing him now calm, and, they hoped, safe, they mutually, though tacitly, agreed to obtrude no further upon meditations that might be useful to him, and remained silently by his side.
For some minutes all were profoundly still; Lionel then suddenly started up; the sisters, affrighted, hastily arose at the same instant; when stretching himself and yawning, he called out, 'Pr'ythee, Camilla, what is become of that smug Mr. Dubster?'
Speechless with amazement, they looked earnestly in his face, and feared he was raving.
They were soon, however undeceived; the tide of penitence and sorrow was turned in his buoyant spirits, and he was only restored to his natural volatile self.
'You used him most shabbily,' he continued, 'and he was a very pretty fellow. The next time I have nothing better to do, I'll send him to you, that you may make it up.'