The history of Lady Julia Mandeville | ||
To Lady Anne Wilmot.
Saturday, Grosvenor-street.
CAN the most refined of her sex, at the very moment when she owns herself shocked at Mrs. H — 's malicious insinuation, refuse to silence her by making me happy? Can she submit to one of the keenest evils a sensible and delicate mind can feel, only to inflict torment on the man whose whole happiness depends on her, and to whose tenderness she has owned herself not insensible?
Seeing your averseness to marriage, I have never pressed you on a subject which seemed displeasing to you, but left it to time and my unwearied love, to dissipate those unjust and groundless prejudices, which stood in the way of all my hopes: but does not this respect, this submission,
Why will you, my dearest Lady Anne, urge your past unhappiness as a reason against entering into a state of which you cannot be a judge? You were never married; the soft consent of hearts, the tender sympathy of yielding minds, was wanting: forced by the will of a tyrannic father to take on you an insupportable yoke; too young to assert the rights of humanity; the freedom of your will destroyed; the name of marriage is profaned by giving it to so detestable an union.
You have often spoke with pleasure of those sweet hours we past at Sudley-Farm. Can you then refuse to perpetuate such happiness? Are there no charms in the unreserved converse of the man who adores
If you are still insensible to my happiness, will not my interest prevail on you to relent? My uncle, who has just lost his only son, offers to settle his whole estate on me, on condition I immediately marry; a condition it depends on you alone whether I shall comply with. If you refuse, he gives it on the same terms to a distant relation, whose mistress has a less cruel heart. Have you so little generosity as to condemn me at once to be poor and miserable; to lose the gifts both of love and fortune?
I have wrote to Lady Belmont to intercede for me, and trust infinitely more to her eloquence than my own.
The only rational objection to my happiness, my uncle's estate removes; you will
Interrupted: my uncle: May all good angels guard the most amiable and lovely of women, and give her to her passionate
Bellville!
The history of Lady Julia Mandeville | ||