What, madam,
said she, can affect a woman, if slight, indignity, and repulse, from a
favoured person, is not able to do it? A woman of my condition to come
over to England, to solicit--how can I support the thought--and to be
refused the protection of the man she prefers to all men; and her request
to see her safe back again, though but as the fool she came over!--You
may blame me, madam--but you must pity me, even were you to have a heart
the sister heart of your inflexible brother.
In vain did Lady L---- plead to her Lady Clementina's deplorable
situation; the reluctance of his own relations to part with him; and the
magnanimity of his self-denial in a hundred instances, on the bare
possibility of being an instrument to restore her: she could not bear to
hear her speak highly of the unhappy lady. She charged Clementina with
the pride of her family, to which she attributed their deserved calamity;
[Deserved! Cruel lady! How could her pitiless heart allow her lips to
utter such a word!] and imputed meanness to the noblest of human minds,
for yielding to the entreaties of a family, some of the principals of
which, she said, had treated him with an arrogance that a man of his
spirit ought not to bear.
Lady Maffei came in. She seems dependent upon her niece. She is her
aunt by marriage only: and Lady L---- speaks very favourably of her from
the advice she gave, and her remonstrances to her kinswoman.
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