Half hour after six.
It will not do, Lucy: I found her in tears at the window, following Rivers’s carriole with her eyes: she turned to me with such a look—in short, my dear,
“The weak, the fond, the fool, the coward woman”
has prevailed over all her resolution: her love is only the more violent for having been a moment restrained; she is not equal to the task she has undertaken; her resentment was concealed tenderness, and has retaken its first form.
I am sorry to find there is not one wise woman in the world but myself.
Past ten.
I have been with her again: she seemed a little calmer; I commended her spirit; she disavowed it; was peevish with me, angry with herself; said she had acted in a manner unworthy her character; accused herself of caprice, artifice, and cruelty; said she ought to have seen him, if not alone, yet with me only: that it was natural he should be surprized at a reception so inconsistent with true friendship, and therefore that he should wish an explanation; that her Rivers (and why not Madame Des Roches’s Rivers?) was incapable of acting otherwise than as became the best and most tender of mankind, and that therefore she ought not to have suffered a whisper injurious to his honor: that I had meant well, but had, by depriving her of Rivers’s friendship, which she had lost by her haughty behaviour, destroyed all the happiness of her life.
To be sure, your poor Bell is always to blame: but if ever I intermeddle between lovers again, Lucy—
I am sure she was ten times more angry with him than I was, but this it is to be too warm in the interest of our friends.
Adieu! till to-morrow.
Yours,
A. Fermor.