“But it will change: let Lord William try to change it.”
Caroline shook her head. “It will not—I cannot.”
“And you won’t do this, when I ask it as a favour for my friend, my particular friend?”
“Excuse me, dear, kind Lady Jane; I know you wish only my happiness, but this would make me unhappy. It is the only thing you could ask with which I would not comply.”
“Then I’ll never ask any thing else while I live from you, Miss Percy,” cried Lady Jane, rising and throwing her pen from her. “You are resolved to throw your happiness from you—do so. Wish your happiness!—yes, I have wished it anxiously—ardently! but now I have done: you are determined to be perverse and philosophical. Good night to you.”
Lady Jane snatched up her candle, and in haste retired. Caroline, sensible that all her ladyship’s anger at this moment arose from warm affection, was the more sorry to have occasioned it, and to feel that she could not, by yielding, allay it instantly.—A sleepless night.
Early in the morning, Keppel, half-dressed and not half awake, came, with her ladyship’s love, and begged to speak a word to Miss Percy.
“Love!” repeated Caroline, as she went to Lady Jane’s apartment: “how kind she is!”
“My dear, you have not slept, I see—nor I neither; but I am sure you have forgiven my hastiness;” said Lady Jane, raising herself on her pillow.
Caroline kissed her affectionately.