It has often been asked why sorrows like these should excite so much gratification? The answer is evident. They are not only tokens of personal respect and affection, but they are proofs that injustice cannot be committed without being perceptibly and often deeply felt by others, as well as by those on whom it is exercised.
When she had appeased her feelings sufficiently to be able to speak, I found that, like her brother, she was come with a disinterested plan for my relief. She began by blaming herself for not having strenuously enough opposed my forbearance with respect to Wakefield; and pleaded with great energy of feeling to persuade me immediately to do myself right. I took the first favourable opportunity to interrupt her; and enquired if she had seen or heard any thing of Wakefield since the letter he wrote? She answered, he had been with her above an hour that very morning.
'In what temper of mind was he?'
'Extremely exasperated.'
'Not at you?'
'Oh no: at Lord Bray: at your persecutors: at the world in general. He says you are not fit to live in it: you are no match for it. You have been persuading him, contrary to all history and experience, that men are capable of virtue and happiness. In short, he owns that he was more than half convinced: but that he believes he shall be obliged to relapse into his former opinions.'
'I have persuaded him?'
'So he says.'
'When? Where?'
'I cannot tell. I thought from his discourse that he had met with you.'