“Why then, Madam,” returned he, “it is my opinion, that supposing what your humility has advanced be just, yet Sir Edward will not suffer by the suggestion; for in cases where the heart is so immediately concerned, as I believe Sir Edward’s to be, taste, or rather reason, has no power to act.”
“You are in the right, Mr. Dorriforth; this is a proper justification of Sir Edward—and when I fall in love, I beg that you will make the same excuse for me.”
“Then,” said he earnestly, “before your heart is in that state which I have described, exert your reason.”
“I shall,” answered she, “and not consent to marry a man whom I could never love.”
“Unless your heart is already given away, Miss Milner, what can make you speak with such a degree of certainty?”
He thought on Lord Frederick when he said this, and he riveted his eyes upon her as if to penetrate her sentiments, and yet trembled for what he should find there. She blushed, and her looks would have confirmed her guilty, if the unembarrassed and free tone of her voice, more than her words, had not preserved her from that sentence.
“No,” she replied, “my heart is not given away; and yet I can venture to declare, Sir Edward will never possess an atom of it.”
“I am sorry, for both your sakes, that these are your sentiments,” he replied. “But as your heart is still your own,” (and he seemed rejoiced to find it was) “permit me to warn you how you part with a thing so precious—the dangers, the sorrows you hazard in bestowing it, are greater than you may be aware of. The heart once gone, our thoughts, our actions, are no more our own, than that is.” He seemed forcing himself to utter all this, and yet broke off as if he could have said much more, if the extreme delicacy of the subject had not prevented him.
When he left the room, and she heard the door shut after him, she said, with an inquisitive thoughtfulness, “What can make good people so skilled in all the weaknesses of the bad? Mr. Dorriforth, with all those prudent admonitions, appears rather like a man who has passed his life in the gay world, experienced all its dangerous allurements, all its repentant sorrows; than like one who has lived his whole time secluded in a monastery, or in his own study. Then he speaks with such exquisite sensibility on the subject of love, that he commends the very thing which he attempts to depreciate. I do not think my Lord Frederick would make the passion appear in more pleasing colours by painting its delights, than Mr. Dorriforth could in describing its sorrows—and if he talks to me frequently in this manner, I shall certainly take pity on Lord Frederick, for the sake of his adversary’s eloquence.”
Miss Woodley, who heard the conclusion of this speech with the tenderest concern, cried, “Alas! you then think seriously of Lord Frederick!”