Heaven will enable me
to be reconciled to the event, because I pursue the dictates of that
judgment, against the biases of my more partial heart. Let that Heaven,
which only can, restore Clementina, and dispose as it pleases of Olivia
and Harriet. We cannot either of us, I humbly hope, be so unhappy as the
lady has been whom I rank among the first of women; and whose whole
family deserves almost equal compassion.
Lady Olivia asked Lady L----, if her brother had not a very tender regard
for me? He had, Lady L---- answered; and told her, that he had rescued
me from a very great distress; and that mine was the most grateful of
human hearts.
She called me sweet young creature; (supposing me, I doubt not, younger
than I am;) but said, that the graces of my person and mind alarmed her
not, as they would have done, had not his attachment to Clementina been
what now she saw, but never could have believed it was; having supposed,
that compassion only was the tie that bound him to her.
But compassion, Lucy, from such a heart as his, the merit so great in the
lady, must be love; a love of the nobler kind--And if it were not, it
would be unworthy of Clementina's.
Lady Maffei called upon her dignity, her birth, to carry her above a
passion that met not with a grateful return. She advised her to dispose
herself to stay in England some months, now she was here.
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