When I returned from attending the Captain down stairs, which I did to the outward door, my beloved met me as I entered the dining-room; complacency reigning in every lovely feature.

‘You see me already,’ said she, ’another creature.  You know not, Mr. Lovelace, how near my heart this hoped-for reconciliation is.  I am now willing to banish every disagreeable remembrance.  You know not, Sir, how much you have obliged me.  And O Mr. Lovelace, how happy I shall be, when my heart is lightened from the all-sinking weight of a father’s curse!  When my dear mamma—­You don’t know, Sir, half the excellencies of my dear mamma! and what a kind heart she has, when it is left to follow its own impulses—­When this blessed mamma shall once more fold me to her indulgent bosom!  When I shall again have uncles and aunts, and a brother and sister, all striving who shall show most kindness and favour to the poor outcast, then no more an outcast—­And you, Mr. Lovelace, to behold all this, with welcome—­What though a little cold at first? when they come to know you better, and to see you oftener, no fresh causes of disgust occurring, and you, as I hope, having entered upon a new course, all will be warmer and warmer love on both sides, till every one will perhaps wonder, how they came to set themselves against you.’

Then drying her tears with her handkerchief, after a few moments pausing, on a sudden, as if recollecting that she had been led by her joy to an expression of it which she had not intended I should see, she retired to her chamber with precipitation; leaving me almost as unable to stand it as herself.

In short, I was—­I want words to say how I was—­my nose had been made to tingle before; my eyes have before been made to glisten by this soul-moving beauty; but so very much affected, I never was—­for, trying to check my sensibility, it was too strong for me, and I even sobbed—­ Yes, by my soul, I audibly sobbed, and was forced to turn from her before she had well finished her affecting speech.

I want, methinks, now I had owned the odd sensation, to describe it to thee—­the thing was so strange to me—­something choking, as it were, in my throat—­I know not how—­yet, I must needs say, though I am out of countenance upon the recollection, that there was something very pretty in it; and I wish I could know it again, that I might have a more perfect idea of it, and be better able to describe it to thee.

But this effect of her joy on such an occasion gives me a high notion of what that virtue must be [What other name can I call it?] which in a mind so capable of delicate transport, should be able to make so charming a creature, in her very bloom, all frost and snow to every advance of love from the man she hates not.  This must be all from education too—­Must it not, Belford?  Can education have stronger force in a woman’s heart than nature?—­Sure it cannot.  But if it can, how entirely right are parents to cultivate their daughters’ minds, and to inspire them with notions of reserve and distance to our sex:  and indeed to make them think highly of their own! for pride is an excellent substitute, let me tell thee, where virtue shines not out, as the sun, in its own unborrowed lustre.