“You’ll drive me wild,” cried I, starting from my seat, “you have done me an irreparable injury;-but I will hear no more!”-and then I ran into my own room.
I was half frantic, I really raved; the good opinion of Lord Orville seemed now irretrievable lost: a faint hope, which in the morning I had vainly encouraged, that I might see him again, and explain the transaction, wholly vanished, now I found he was so soon to leave town: and I could not but conclude, that, for the rest of my life, he would regard me as an object of utter contempt.
The very idea was a dagger to my heart!-I could not support it, and-but I blush to proceed-I fear your disapprobation; yet I should not be conscious of having merited it, but that the repugnance I feel to relate to you what I have done, makes me suspect I must have erred. Will you forgive me, if I won that I first wrote an account of this transaction to Miss Mirvan?-and that I even thought of concealing it from you?-Short-lived, however, was the ungrateful idea, and sooner will I risk the justice of your displeasure, than unworthily betray your generous confidence.
You are now probably prepared for what follows-which is a letter-a hasty letter, that, in the height of my agitation, I wrote to Lord Orville.
“My Lord,
“I am so infinitely ashamed of the application made yesterday
for your Lordship’s carriage in my name, and so greatly
shocked at hearing how much it was injured, that I cannot
forbear writing a few lines, to clear myself from the
imputation of an impertinence which I blush to be suspected
of, and to acquaint you, that the request for your carriage
was made against my consent, and the visit with which you were
importuned this morning without my knowledge.
“I am inexpressibly concerned at having been the instrument,
however innocently, of so much trouble to your Lordship; but I
beg you to believe, that the reading these lines is the only
part of it which I have given voluntarily. I am, my Lord,
“Your Lordship’s most Humble servant, “EVELINA ANVILLE.”
I applied to the maid of the house to get this note conveyed to Berkley-square; but scarce had I parted with it, before I regretted having written at all; and I was flying down stairs to recover it, when the voice of Sir Clement Willoughby stopped me. As Madame Duval had ordered we should be denied to him, I was obliged to return up stairs; and after he was gone, my application was too late, as the maid had given it to a porter.
My time did not pass very serenely while he was gone; however, he brought me no answer, but that Lord Orville was not at home. Whether or not he will take the trouble to send any,-or whether he will condescend to call,-or whether the affair will rest as it is, I know not;-but, in being ignorant, am most cruelly anxious.