Lady Maffei
besought her to compose herself, and return to the company.
She could not bear, she said, to return to the company, the slighted, the
contemned object, she must appear to be to every one in it. I am an
intruder, said she, haughtily; a beggar, with a fortune that would
purchase a sovereignty in some countries. Make my excuses to your
sister, to the rest of the company--and to that fine young lady--whose
eyes, by their officious withdrawing from his, and by the consciousness
that glowed in her face whenever he addressed her, betrayed, at least to
a jealous eye, more than she would wish to have seen--But tell her, that
all lovely and blooming as she is, she must have no hope, while
Clementina lives.
I hope, Lucy, it is only to a jealous eye that my heart is so
discoverable!--I thank her for her caution. But I can say what she
cannot; that from my heart, cost me what it may, I do subscribe to a
preference in favour of a lady, who has acted, in the most arduous
trials, in a greater manner than I fear either Olivia or I could have
acted, in the same circumstances. We see that her reason, but not her
piety, deserted her in the noble struggle between her love and her
religion. In the most affecting absences of her reason, the soul of the
man she loved was the object of her passion. However hard it is to
prefer another to one's self, in such a case as this; yet if my judgment
is convinced, my acknowledgment shall follow it.
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