She owned, that her chief motive for coming to England was, to
cast her fortune at her brother's feet; and, as she knew him to be a man
of honour, to comply with any terms he should propose to her. He had
offered to the family della Porretta to allow their daughter her
religion, and her confessor, and to live with her every other year in
Italy. She herself, not inferior in birth, in person, in mind, as she
said, she presumed, and superior in fortune, the riches of three branches
of her family, all rich, having centred in her, insisted not now upon
such conditions. Her aunt, she said, knew not that she proposed, on
conviction, a change of her religion; but she was resolved not to conceal
anything from Lady L----. She left her to judge how much she must be
affected, when he declared his obligation to leave England; and
especially when he owned, that it was to go to Bologna, and that so
suddenly, as if, as she apprehended at first, it was to avoid her. She
had been in tears, she said, and even would have kneeled to him, to
induce him to suspend his journey for one month, and then to have taken
her over with him, and seen her safe in her own palace, if he would go
upon so hated, and so fruitless, as well as so hazardous an errand: but
he had denied her this poor favour.
This refusal, she owned, had put her out of all patience. She was
unhappily passionate; but was the most placable of her sex.
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