“My sweet child,” said Mrs. Ormond, “I cannot bear to see you so melancholy; consider, Mr. Hervey will be with us to-morrow, and it will give him a great deal of pain to see you so.”
“Will it? Then I will try to be very gay.”
Mrs. Ormond was so delighted to see Virginia smile, that she could not forbear adding, “The strange man was not wrong in every thing he said; you will, one of these days, be Mr. Hervey’s wife.”
“That, I am sure,” said Virginia, bursting again into tears, “that, I am sure, I do not wish, unless he does.”
“He does, he does, my dear—do not let this delicacy of yours, which has been wound up too high, make you miserable. He thought of you, he loved you long and long ago.”
“He is very good, too good,” said Virginia, sobbing.
“Nay, what is more—for I can keep nothing from you—he has been educating you all this time on purpose for his wife, and he only waits till your education is finished, and till he is sure that you feel no repugnance for him.”
“I should be very ungrateful if I felt any repugnance for him,” said Virginia; “I feel none.”
“Oh, that you need not assure me,” said Mrs. Ormond.
“But I do not wish to marry him—I do not wish to marry.”