Do you remember that day, my Rivers, when, sitting in the little hawthorn grove, near the borders of the river, the rest of the company, of which Sir George was one, ran to look at a ship that was passing: I would have followed; you asked me to stay, by a look which it was impossible to mistake; nothing could be more imprudent than my stay, yet I had not resolution to refuse what I saw gave you pleasure: I stayed; you pressed my hand, you regarded me with a look of unutterable love.
My Rivers, from that dear moment your Emily vowed never to be another’s: she vowed not to sacrifice all the happiness of her life to a romantic parade of fidelity to a man whom she had been betrayed into receiving as a lover; she resolved, if necessary, to own to him the tenderness with which you had inspired her, to entreat from his esteem, from his compassion, a release from engagements which made her wretched.
My heart burns with the love of virtue, I am tremblingly alive to fame: what bitterness then must have been my portion had I first seen you when the wife of another!
Such is the powerful sympathy that unites us, that I fear, that virtue, that strong sense of honor and fame, so powerful in minds most turned to tenderness, would only have served to make more poignant the pangs of hopeless, despairing love.
How blest am I, that we met before my situation made it a crime to love you! I shudder at the idea how wretched I might have been, had I seen you a few months later.
I am just returned from a visit at a few miles distance. I find a letter from my dear Bell, that she will be here to-morrow; how do I long to see her, to talk to her of my Rivers!
I am interrupted.
Adieu! Yours,
Emily Montague.
LETTER CLXXVIII.182.
To Mrs. Temple.