“You cannot justly reproach me, Mr. Griffith, with your disappointment; for I have not uttered or authorized a syllable that could induce you or any one to believe that I would consent to quit my uncle.”
“Miss Howard will not think me presumptuous, if I remind her that there was a time when she did not think me unworthy to be entrusted with her person and happiness.”
A rich bloom mantled on the face of Cecilia, as she replied:
“Nor do I now, Mr. Griffith; but you do well to remind me of my former weakness, for the recollection of its folly and imprudence only adds to my present strength.”
“Nay,” interrupted her eager lover, “if I intended a reproach, or harbored a boastful thought, spurn me from you forever, as unworthy of your favor.”
“I acquit you of both much easier than I can acquit myself of the charge of weakness and folly,” continued Cecilia; “but there are many things that have occurred, since we last met, to prevent a repetition of such inconsiderate rashness on my part. One of them is,” she added, smiling sweetly, “that I have numbered twelve additional months to my age, and a hundred to my experience. Another, and perhaps a more important one, is, that my uncle then continued among the friends of his youth, surrounded by those whose blood mingles with his own; but here he lives a stranger; and, though he finds some consolation in dwelling in a building where his ancestors have dwelt before him, yet he walks as an alien through its gloomy passages, and would find the empty honor but a miserable compensation for the kindness and affection of one whom he has loved and cherished from her infancy.”
“And yet he is opposed to you in your private wishes, Cecilia, unless my besotted vanity has led me to believe what it would now be madness to learn was false; and in your opinions of public things, you are quite as widely separated. I should think there could be but little happiness dependent on a connection where there is no one feeling entertained in common.”
“There is, and an all-important one,” said Miss Howard; “'tis our love. He is my kind, my affectionate, and, unless thwarted by some evil cause, my indulgent uncle and guardian,—and I am his brother Harry's child. This tie is not easily to be severed, Mr. Griffith; though, as I do not wish to see you crazed, I shall not add, that your besotted vanity has played you false; but surely, Edward, it is possible to feel a double tie, and so to act as to discharge our duties to both. I never, never can or will consent to desert my uncle, a stranger as he is in the land whose rule he upholds so blindly. You know not this England, Griffith; she receives her children from the colonies with cold and haughty distrust, like a jealous stepmother, who is wary of the favors that she bestows on her fictitious offspring.”
“I know her in peace, and I know her in war,” said the young sailor, proudly, “and can add, that she is a haughty friend, and a stubborn foe; but she grapples now with those who ask no more of her than an open sea and an enemy's favors. But this determination will be melancholy tidings for me to convey to Barnstable.”
“Nay,” said Cecilia, smiling, “I cannot vouch for others who have no uncles, and who have an extra quantity of ill humor and spleen against this country, its people, and its laws, although profoundly ignorant of them all.”