The Greatest Regency Romance Novels. Maria Edgeworth

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      'To Charles Trueworth, Esq.

      Most cruel and ungenerous man!

      Loth I am to give you epithets like these: my heart shudders, and my trembling hand is scarce able to guide my pen in those reproaches which my reason tells me you deserve: how unkind, how stabbing to the soul, was your behaviour at our last meeting! yet, even then, you promised me to write; I depended on that promise, and hope had not quite forsook me; every knocking at the door I expected was a messenger from you; in vain I expected, in vain I looked, in vain I listened for the welcome mandate; and every disappointment threw me into fresh agonies. I have sent twice to the coffee-house, been there once in person; but could hear nothing of you. O, what secret recess now hides you from me? What can have caused so terrible a reverse in my so lately happy fate? I fear to guess; for madness is in the thought! O do not drive me to extremes!! Many women, with not half my love, or my despair, have ran headlong into actions which, in my cooler moments, I dread to think on. Be assured, I cannot live, will not live, without you! Torture me not any longer with suspense! Pronounce my doom at once! But let it be from your own mouth that I receive it; that you, at least, may be witness of the death you inflict, and be compelled to pity, if you cannot love, the most unfortunate, and most faithful, of her sex,

      F. Mellasin.

      P.S. I have charged the man who brings you this, to find you wherever you are, and not to leave you without an answer.'

      Mr. Trueworth was in the utmost perplexity of mind on reading this distracted epistle. Of all the hours of his past life he could not recollect any one which gave him so much cause of repentance as that wherein he had commenced an amour with a woman of so violent a temper: he had never loved her; and all the liking he ever had for her being now utterly erased by a more laudable impression, the guilty pleasures he had enjoyed with her were now irksome to his remembrance; and the more she endeavoured to revive the tender folly in him, the more she grew distasteful to him.

      It so little becomes a woman, whose characteristick should be modesty, to use any endeavours to force desire, that those who do it are sure to convert love into indifference, and indifference into loathing and contempt: even she who, with the greatest seeming delicacy, labours to rekindle a flame once extinguished, will find the truth of what Morat says in the play—

      'To love once pass'd we cannot backward move;

       Call yesterday again, and we may love.'

      Mr. Trueworth, however, had so much pity for that unfortunate creature, that he would have given, perhaps, good part of his estate that she no longer loved him: but how to turn the tide of so extravagant a passion, he could not yet resolve; and it being near the time in which he knew they would expect him at Sir Bazil's, where he now dined every day, and the messenger who brought him the letter also growing impatient to be dispatched, he wrote in haste these few lines.

      'To Miss Flora Mellasin.

      Madam,

      Business of the greatest consequence now calls upon me, and I have no time to write as I would do; but depend upon it I will send to you to-morrow morning, and either appoint a meeting, or let you know my real sentiments in a letter; till when, I beg you will make yourself more easy, if you desire to oblige him who is, with the most unfeigned good wishes, Madam, your most humble, and most obedient servant,

      C. Trueworth.

      P.S. I shall take it as a favour, Madam, that you will henceforward forbear to make any enquiry concerning me at the coffee-house, or elsewhere.'

      Having given this to Miss Flora's porter, he hasted away to Sir Bazil's; there to compose his mind, after the embarrassments it had sustained that morning.

CHAPTER IX

       Table of Contents

      Contains very little to the purpose

      Mr. Francis Thoughtless had no sooner left the lodgings of Mr. Trueworth, than he went directly to those of his sister Betsy; where, in the humour he then was, the reader will easily suppose, he could not be very good company. After telling her he had seen Mr. Trueworth, and had had some conversation with him on her account, 'I am now convinced,' said he, 'of what before I doubted not, that by your own ill management, and want of a just sense of what is for your interest and happiness, you have lost an opportunity of establishing both, which can never be retrieved: nor is this all; your manner of behaviour not only ruins yourself, but involves all belonging to you in endless quarrels and perplexities.'

      These were reproaches which Miss Betsy had too much spirit to have borne from any one but a brother; and even to him she was far from yielding that she had in any measure deserved them. 'I defy Trueworth himself,' cried she, with all the resentment of a disappointed lover in her heart, 'to accuse me of one action that the strictest virtue could condemn!'

      'Ah, sister!' replied he, 'do not let your vanity deceive you on this score: I see very plainly that Mr. Trueworth regards you with too much indifference to retain resentment for any treatment you have given him; that he once loved you, I am well assured; that he no longer does so, is owing to yourself: but I shall mention him no more; the passion he had for you is extinguished, I believe, beyond all possibility of reviving, nor would I wish you to attempt it. I would only have you remember what Mr. Goodman uttered concerning you with almost his dying breath: for my own part, I have not been a witness of your conduct, since the unhappy brulée I fell into on your account at Oxford, which I then hoped would be a sufficient warning for your future behaviour.'

      If Miss Betsy had been less innocent, it is probable she would have replied in a more satisfactory manner to her brother's reproaches; but the real disdain she always had for whatever had the least tendency to dishonour, made her zealous in defending herself only in things of which she was not accused, and silent in regard of those in which she was judged blame-worthy.

      'What avails your being virtuous!' said Mr. Francis; 'I hope, and believe, you are so: but your reputation is of more consequence to your family; the loss of the one might be concealed, but a blemish on the other brings certain infamy and disgrace on yourself and all belonging to you.'

      On this she assumed the courage to tell him his way of reasoning was neither just nor delicate. 'Would you,' said she, 'be guilty of a base action, rather than have it suspected that you were so?'—'No,' answered he; 'but virtue is a different thing in our sex to what it is in yours: the forfeiture of what is called virtue in a woman is more a folly than a baseness; but the virtue of a man is his courage, his constancy, his probity; which if he loses, he becomes contemptible to himself, as well as to the world.'

      'And certainly,' rejoined Miss Betsy, with some warmth, 'the loss of innocence must render a woman contemptible to herself, though she should happen to hide her transgression from the world.'—'That may be,' said Mr. Francis; 'but then her kindred suffer not through her fault: the remorse, and the vexation for what she has done, is all her own. Indeed, sister,' continued he, 'a woman brings less dishonour upon a family by twenty private sins, than by one publick indiscretion.'

      'Well,' answered she, 'I hope I shall always take care to avoid both the one and the other, for my own sake. As to indulging myself with the innocent pleasures of the town, I have the example of some ladies of the first quality, and best reputation, to justify me in it.'

      Mr. Thoughtless was about to make some reply, which, perhaps, would have been pretty keen, but was prevented by the coming in of her maid, who delivering a letter to her, СКАЧАТЬ