Miss Wilmot heaved a deep sigh, and attempted to speak: but she only stammered. Her utterance failed; and her eyes were cast on the floor. Hope and despair were combating; and the latter was the strongest. She wished to confide, she wished to plead for the possibility of his being sincere: but the mischief he had inflicted, the deceit he had practised, and a remembrance of the picture she had formerly given me of him, rushed upon her mind; and her spirits sunk.
'Look up, lovely Lydia,' said I, taking her hand, 'and revive. There is, there must be hope. The man who could write this letter cannot be all villain.'
The struggle of the passions was violent. A momentary wildness, such as I had formerly witnessed, flashed in her eyes; she started from her seat, griped my hand, then bursting into tears exclaimed—'Oh Mr. Trevor!' and dropped down again upon the chair.
Eager to relieve a heart so overcharged, I again addressed her. 'If,' said I, 'the property left by Mr. Wakefield's uncle can really be employed to so noble a purpose as that of reclaiming him and making you happy, let me perish rather than endeavour to counteract such blessings. Let me be the thing he so much dreads, a beggar: but let me obey the purest passions of the heart, when they are sanctioned by the best principles of the understanding.'
Till this instant she had forgotten that, if I consented to enrich him, I must rob myself. But the thought no sooner occurred than she cried, 'No! It must not be! It cannot be! To require it of you is infamous. It debases him, and would make me hate myself; were I to participate in such an action.'
'You judge too severely,' I replied. 'I am not so unfortunately circumstanced as he is. My character is not lost. I am not shut out of society. I have friends, plans, and prospects; and, granting him to be sincere, his arguments, as far as they relate to him and me, are I suspect unanswerable. Of that sincerity I would fain not doubt: but it is our mutual duty to be wary. Here therefore at present the matter shall rest. I am determined to bring no action, till time and future events shall teach me the course I ought to pursue.'
Overwhelmed by a sense of obligation, and by the thronging emotions of every kind that assailed her, she was again half suffocated with passion. As she recovered her eyes sufficiently spoke her feelings.
When she grew calm, she was led to ask what conversation I had had, and with whom, relative to Mr. Wakefield? I gave her the history of my acquaintance with the supposed Belmont, and of the scene that had passed that very day: which she thought altogether surprising, and seemed to shrink with the fear that it was an artful plan, contrived by artful men. She was in some sort appeased, however, when I once more reminded her of my determination to wait and hope for the best.
I then enquired concerning the second letter she had mentioned? To which she answered—'It is addressed to me, as a mediator: but relates entirely to you, and the person who wrote it; your poor penitent servant, Philip.'
She gave it me; and these were its contents.