My friend, behold your son!—Darcey, behold your father!—As you reverence and obey Sir James, as you consult him on all occasions, as you are guided by his advice, receive my blessing.—These were his parting words, hugg'd into me in his last cold embrace.—No, George, the promise I made can never be forfeited.—I sealed it on his lifeless hand, before I was borne from him.
Now, are you convinc'd no mean views with-hold me?—You despise not more than I do the knave and coxcomb; for no other, to satiate their own vanity, would sport away the quiet of a fellow-creature.—Well may you call it cruel.—Such cruelties fall little short of those practised by Nero and Caligula.
Did it depend on myself only, I would tell Miss Warley I love, every time I behold her enchanting face; every time I hear the voice of wisdom springing from the seat of innocence.
No shadow of gaining over Sir James!—Efforts has not been wanting:—I mean efforts to declare my inclination.—I have follow'd him like a ghost for days past, thinking at every step how I should bless this or that spot on which he consented to my happiness.—Pleasing phantoms!—How have they fled at sight of his determin'd countenance!—Methought I could trace in it the same obduracy which nature vainly pleaded to remove.—In other matters my heart is resolute;—here an errant coward.—No! I cannot break it to him whilst in Hampshire.—When I get to town, a letter shall speak for me.—Sometimes I am tempted to trust the secret to Lady Powis.—She is compassionate;—she would even risk her own peace to preserve mine.—Again the thoughts of involving her in fresh perplexities determines me against it.
Had my father been acquainted with that part of Sir James's character which concerned his son, I am convinc'd he would have made some restrictions in regard to the explicit obedience he enjoined.—But all was hushed whilst Mr. Powis continued on his travels; nor, until he settled abroad, did any one suspect there had been a family disagreement:—even at this time the whole affair is not generally known.—The name of the lady to whom he was obliged to make proposals, is in particular carefully concealed.—I, who from ten years old have been bred up with them, am an entire stranger to it.—Perhaps no part of the affair would ever have transpired, had not Sir James made some discoveries, in the first agitation of his passion, before a large company, when he received an account of Mr. Powis's being appointed to the government of ——. No secret can be safe in a breast where every passage is not well guarded against an enemy which, like lightning, throws up all before it.
Let me not forget to tell you, amongst a multiplicity of concerns crowding on my mind, that I have positively deny'd Edmund to intercede with his father regarding the commission.—A bare surmise that he is my rival, has silenced me.—Was I ungenerous enough to indulge myself in getting rid of him, an opportunity now offers;—but I am as averse to such proceedings as he ought to be who is the friend of Molesworth, and writes the name of
DARCEY.