“Oh! my lord!” said Amanda, turning pale, and shrinking from him, “let me not be the unfortunate cause of disturbing that harmony. Comply with the wishes of Lord Cherbury, marry Lady Euphrasia, and let me be forgotten.”
“Amanda,” cried his lordship, “accuse not yourself of being the cause of any disagreement between us. Had I never seen you, with respect to Lady Euphrasia, I should have felt the same inability to comply with his wishes. To me her person is not more unpleasing than her mind. I have long been convinced that wealth alone was insufficient to bestow felicity, and have ever considered the man who could sacrifice his feelings at the shrine of interest or ambition, degraded below the standard of humanity; that to marry, merely from selfish considerations, was one of the most culpable, most contemptible actions which could be committed. To enter into such a union, I want the propensities which can alone ever occasion it, namely, a violent passion for the enjoyments only attainable through the medium of wealth. Left at an early age uncontrolled master of my own actions, I drank freely of the cup of pleasure, but found it soon pall upon my taste. It was, indeed, unmixed with any of those refined ingredients which can only please the intellectual appetite, and might properly be termed the cup of false instead of real pleasure. Thinking, therefore, as I do, that a union without love is abhorrent to probity and sensibility, and that the dissipated pleasures of life are not only prejudicial but tiresome, I naturally wish to secure to myself domestic happiness; but never could it be experienced except united to a woman whom my reason thoroughly approved, who should at once possess my unbounded confidence and tenderest affection. Who should be, not only the promoter of my joys, but the assuager of my cares. In you I have found such a woman, such a being, as I candidly confess, some time ago, I thought it impossible to meet with. To you I am bound by a sentiment even stronger than love—by honor—and with real gratitude acknowledge my obligations in being permitted to atone, in some degree, for my errors relative to you. But I will not allow my Amanda to suppose these errors proceeded from any settled depravity of soul. Allowed to be, as I have before said, my own master at an early period, from the natural thoughtlessness of youth, I was led into scenes which the judgment of riper years has since severely condemned. Here, too, often I met with women whose manners, instead of checking, gave a latitude to freedom; women, too, who, from their situations in life, had every advantage that could be requisite for improving and refining their minds. From conversing with them I gradually imbibed a prejudice against the whole sex, and under that prejudice first beheld you, and feared either to doubt or to believe the reality of the innocence you appeared to possess.
“Convinced at length, most fully, most happily convinced of its reality, my prejudices no longer remained; they vanished like mists before the sun—or rather like the illusions of falsehood before the influence of truth. Were those, my dear Amanda, of your sex, who, like you, had the resistless power of pleasing, to use the faculties assigned them by a bounteous Providence in the cause of virtue, they would soon check the dissipation of the times.
“’Tis impossible to express the power a beautiful form has over the human mind; that power might be exerted for nobler purposes. Purity speaking from love-inspiring lips would, like the voice of Adam’s heavenly guest, so sweetly breathe upon the ear as insensibly to influence the heart; the libertine it corrected would, if not utterly hardened, reform; no longer would he glory in his vices, but touched and abashed, instead of destroying, worship female virtue.
“But I wander from the purpose of my soul. Convinced as I am of the dissimilarity between my father’s inclinations and mine, I think it better to give no intimation of my present intentions, which, if permitted by you, I am unalterably determined on fulfilling, as I should consider it as highly insulting to him to incur his prohibition, and then act in defiance of it, though my heart would glory in avowing its choice. The peculiar circumstances I have just mentioned will, I trust, induce my Amanda to excuse a temporary concealment of it, till beyond the power of mortals to separate us—a private and immediate union, the exigency of situation, and the security of felicity demands. I shall feel a trembling apprehension till I call you mine; life is too short to permit the waste of time in idle scruples and unmeaning ceremonies. The eye of suspicion has long rested upon us, and would, I am convinced, effect a premature discovery, if we took not some measure to prevent it.
“Deem me not too precipitate, my Amanda,” passing his arm gently round her waist, “if I ask you to-morrow night, for the last sweet proof of confidence you can give me, by putting yourself under my protection. A journey to Scotland is unavoidable—in the arrangements I shall make for it, all that is due to delicacy I shall consider.”
“Mention it no more, my lord,” said Amanda, in a faltering accent; “no longer delude your imagination or mine with the hopes of being united.”
Hitherto she had believed the approbation of Lord Cherbury to the wishes of his son would be obtained, the moment he was convinced how essential their gratification was to his felicity. She judged of him by her father, who, she was convinced, if situations were reversed, would bestow her on Mortimer without hesitation. These ideas so nourished her attachment, that, like the vital parts of existence, it at length became painfully, almost fatally, susceptible of every shock. Her dream of happiness was over the moment she heard Lord Cherbury’s consent was not to be asked, from a fear of its being refused. ’Twas misery to be separated from Lord Mortimer, but it was guilt and misery to marry him clandestinely, after the solemn injunction her father had given her against such a step. The shock of disappointment could not be borne with composure; it pressed like a cold dead weight upon her heart. She trembled, and, unable to support herself, sunk against the shoulder of Lord Mortimer, while a shower of tears proclaimed her agony. Alarmed by her emotion, Lord Mortimer hastily demanded its source, and the reason of the words which had just escaped her.
“Because, my lord,” replied she, “I cannot consent to a clandestine measure, nor bear you should incur the displeasure of Lord Cherbury on my account. Though Lady Euphrasia Sutherland is not agreeable, there are many women who, with equal rank and fortune, possess the perfections suited to your taste. Seek for one of these—choose from among them a happy daughter of prosperity, and let Amanda, untitled, unportioned, and unpleasing to your father, return to an obscurity which owes its comfort to his fostering bounty.” “Does this advice,” asked Lord Mortimer, “proceed from Amanda’s heart?” “No,” replied she, hesitatingly, and smiling through her tears, “not from her heart, but from a better counsellor, her reason.”
“And shall I not obey the dictates of reason,” replied he, “in uniting my destiny to yours? Reason directs us to seek happiness through virtuous means; and what means are so adapted for that purpose, as a union with a beloved and amiable woman? No, Amanda; no titled daughter of prosperity, to use your own words, shall ever attract my affections from you. ‘Imagination cannot form a shape, besides your own, to like of;’ a shape which even if despoiled of its graces, would enshrine a mind so transcendently lovely, as to secure my admiration. In choosing you as the partner of my future days, I do not infringe the moral obligation which exists between father and son; for as, on one hand, it does not require weak indulgence; so, on the other, it does not demand implicit obedience, if reason and happiness must be sacrificed by it. Nothing would have tempted me to propose a private union but the hope of escaping many disagreeable circumstances by it. If you persist, however, in rejecting it, I shall openly avow my intentions, for a long continuance of anxiety and suspense I cannot support.”