She frankly owned that she had once thought of embarking out of all our ways for some one of our American colonies. But now that she had been compelled to see me, (which had been her greatest dread), and which she might be happiest in the resumption of her former favourite scheme, if Miss Howe could find her a reputable and private asylum, till her cousin Morden could come.—But if he came not soon, and if she had a difficulty to get to a place of refuge, whether from her brother or from any body else, [meaning me, I suppose,] she might yet perhaps go abroad; for, to say the truth, she could not think of returning to her father’s house, since her brother’s rage, her sister’s upbraidings, her father’s anger, her mother’s still-more-affecting sorrowings, and her own consciousness under them all, would be unsupportable to her.
O Jack! I am sick to death, I pine, I die, for Miss Howe’s next letter! I would bind, gag, strip, rob, and do any thing but murder, to intercept it.
But, determined as she seems to be, it was evident to me, nevertheless, that she had still some tenderness for me.
She often wept as she talked, and much oftener sighed. She looked at me twice with an eye of undoubted gentleness, and three times with an eye tending to compassion and softness; but its benign rays were as often snatched back, as I may say, and her face averted, as if her sweet eyes were not to be trusted, and could not stand against my eager eyes; seeking, as they did, for a lost heart in her’s, and endeavouring to penetrate to her very soul.
More than once I took her hand. She struggled not much against the freedom. I pressed it once with my lips—she was not very angry. A frown indeed—but a frown that had more distress in it than indignation.
How came the dear soul, (clothed as it is with such a silken vesture,) by all its steadiness?* Was it necessary that the active gloom of such a tyrant of a father, should commix with such a passive sweetness of a will-less mother, to produce a constancy, an equanimity, a steadiness, in the daughter, which never woman before could boast of? If so, she is more obliged to that despotic father than I could have imagined a creature to be, who gave distinction to every one related to her beyond what the crown itself can confer.
* See Vol. I. Letters IX. XIV. and XIX. for what she herself says on that steadiness which Mr. Lovelace, though a deserved sufferer by it, cannot help admiring.
I hoped, I said, that she would admit of the intended visit, which I had so often mentioned, of the two ladies.
She was here. She had seen me. She could not help herself at present. She even had the highest regard for the ladies of my family, because of their worthy characters. There she turned away her sweet face, and vanquished an half-risen sigh.
I kneeled to her then. It was upon a verdant cushion; for we were upon the grass walk. I caught her hand. I besought her with an earnestness that called up, as I could feel, my heart to my eyes, to make me, by her forgiveness and example, more worthy of them, and of her own kind and generous wishes. By my soul, Madam, said I, you stab me with your goodness—your undeserved goodness! and I cannot bear it!