Good Heaven, how strange the recital! how incomprehensible an affair! The Miss Belmont then who is actually at Bristol, passes for the daughter of my unhappy mother!—passes, in short, for your Evelina! Who she can be, or what this tale can mean, I have not any idea.
Mrs. Selwyn soon after left me to my own reflections. Indeed they were not very pleasant. Quietly as I had borne her relation, the moment I was alone I felt most bitterly both the disgrace and sorrow of a rejection so cruelly inexplicable.
I know not how long I might have continued in this situation, had I not been awakened from my melancholy reverie by the voice of Lord Orville. “May I come in,” cried he, “or shall I interrupt you?”
I was silent, and he seated himself next me.
“I fear,” he continued, “Miss Anville will think I persecute her: yet so much as I have to say, and so much as I wish to hear, with so few opportunities for either, she cannot wonder—and I hope she will not be offended—that I seize with such avidity every moment in my power to converse with her. You are grave,” added he, taking my hand; “I hope the pleasure it gives to me, will not be a subject of pain to you?—You are silent!—Something, I am sure, has afflicted you:—would to Heaven I were able to console you!—Would to Heaven I were worthy to participate in your sorrows!”
My heart was too full to bear this kindness, and I could only answer by my tears. “Good Heaven,” cried he, “how you alarm me!—My love, my sweet Miss Anville, deny me no longer to be the sharer of your griefs!—tell me, at least, that you have not withdrawn your esteem!—that you do not repent the goodness you have shown me!—that you still think me the same grateful Orville, whose heart you have deigned to accept!”
“Oh, my Lord,” cried I, “your generosity overpowers me!” And I wept like an infant. For now, that all my hopes of being acknowledged seemed finally crushed, I felt the nobleness of his disinterested regard so forcibly, that I could scarce breathe under the weight of gratitude which oppressed me.
He seemed greatly shocked; and, in terms the most flattering, the most respectfully tender, he at once soothed my distress, and urged me to tell him its cause.
“My Lord,” said I, when I was able to speak, “you little know what an outcast you have honoured with your choice!—a child of bounty—an orphan from infancy—dependant, even for subsistence, dependent, upon the kindness of compassion!—Rejected by my natural friends—disowned forever by my nearest relation—Oh, my Lord, so circumstanced, can I deserve the distinction with which you honour me? No, no, I feel the inequality too painfully;—you must leave me, my Lord; you must suffer me to return to obscurity; and there, in the bosom of my first, best, my only friend—I will pour forth all the grief of my heart!—while you, my Lord, must seek elsewhere—”
I could not proceed; my whole soul recoiled against the charge I would have given, and my voice refused to utter it.
“Never,” cried he, warmly, “my heart is yours, and I swear to you an attachment eternal!—You prepare me, indeed, for a tale of horror, and I am almost breathless with expectation;—but so firm is my conviction, that, whatever are your misfortunes, to have merited them is not of the number, that I feel myself more strongly, more invincibly devoted to you than ever!—Tell me but where I may find this noble friend, whose virtues you have already taught me to reverence—and I will fly to obtain his consent and intercession, that henceforward our fates may be indissolubly united;—and then shall it be the sole study of my life to endeavour to soften your past—and guard you from future misfortunes!”
I had just raised my eyes to answer this most generous of men, when the first object they met was Mrs. Selwyn.
“So, my dear,” cried she, “what, still courting the rural shades!—I thought ere now you would have been satiated with this retired seat, and I have been seeking you all over the house. But I find the only way to meet with you—is to enquire for Lord Orville.
