MOLESWORTH.
LETTER VI
Lord DARCEY to the Honourable GEORGE MOLESWORTH.
Barford Abbey,
Angry!—You are really angry!—Well, I too am angry with myself.—I do love Miss Warley;—but why this to you?—Your penetration has already discover'd it.—Yet, O Molesworth! such insurmountable obstacles:—no declaration can be made,—at least whilst I continue in this neighbourhood.
Sir James would rave at my imprudence.—Lady Powis, whatever are her sentiments, must give them up to his opinion.—Inevitably I lose the affection of persons I have sacredly—promised to obey,—sacredly.—Was not my promise given to a dying father?—Miss Warley has no tye; yet, by the duty she observes to Sir James and Lady Powis, you would think her bound by the strongest cords of nature.
Scarce a moment from her:—at Jenkings's every morning;—on foot if good weather,—else in the coach for the convenience of bringing her with me.—I am under no constraint:—Sir James and her Ladyship seem not the least suspicious: this I much wonder at, in the former particularly.
In my tête-à-têtes with Miss Warley, what think you are our subjects?—Chiefly divinity, history, and geography.—Of these studies she knows more than half the great men who have wrote for ages past.—On a taste for the two latter I once prided myself.—An eager pursuit for the former springs up in my mind, whilst conversing with her, like a plant long hid in the earth, and called out by the appearance of a summer's sun.—This sun must shine at Faulcon Park;—without it all will be dreary:—yet how can I draw it thither?—Edmund—but why should I fear Edmund?