But I cannot be unjust:—To Clementina he means. Who wished him to be so?—Unjust! I hope not. It is a diminution to your glory, Sir Charles Grandison, to have the word unjust, in this way of speaking, in your thoughts! As if a good man had lain under a temptation to be unjust; and had but just recollected himself.
'I cannot be ungenerous.' To the noble lady, I suppose? He must take compassion on her. And did he think himself under an obligation to my forwardness to make this declaration to me, as to one who wished him to be ungenerous to such a lady for my sake!—I cannot bear the thought of this. Is it not as if he had said, 'Fond Harriet, I see what you expect from me—But I must have compassion for, I cannot be ungenerous to, Clementina!'—But, what a poor word is compassion! Noble Clementina! I grieve for you, though the man be indeed a generous man!—O defend me, my better genius, from wanting the compassion even of a Sir Charles Grandison!
But what means he by the word selfish! He cannot be selfish!—I comprehend not the meaning of this word—Clementina has a very high fortune—Harriet but a very middling one. He cannot be unjust, ungenerous to Clementina—Nor yet selfish—This word confounds me, from a man that says nothing at random!
Well, but breakfast-time is come, while I am busy in self-debatings. I will go down, that I may not seem to affect parade. I will endeavour to see with indifference, him that we have all been admiring and studying for this last fortnight, in such a variety of lights. The christian: the hero: the friend:—Ah, Lucy! the lover of Clementina: the generous kinsman of Lord W——: the modest and delicate benefactor of the Mansfields: the free, gay, raillier of Lady Beauchamp; and, in her, of all our sex's foibles!
But he is come! While I am prating to you with my pen, he is come—Why,
Lucy, would you detain me?—Now must the fool go down in a kind of hurry:
Yet stay till she is sent for.—And that is now.
LETTER XI
MISS BYRON.—IN CONTINUATION
O Lucy, I have such a conversation to relate to you!—But let me lead to it.
Sir Charles met me at the opening of the door. He was all himself. Such an unaffected modesty and politeness; yet such an ease and freedom!
I thought, by his address, that he would have taken my hand; and both hands were so emulatively passive—How does he manage it to be so free in a first address, yet so respectful, that a princess could not blame him!