brook it!—­How would the world confuse and ridicule the fondness of an affection so ill placed!—­What would they say when they should hear the nobly born, the rich, and the accomplished monsieur du Plessis, had taken for his wife a maid obscurely defended, and with no other dowry than her virtue!—­My very affection for you would, in the general opinion, lose all its merit, and pass for sordid interest:—­I should be looked upon as the bane of your glory;—­as one whose artifices had ensnared you into a forgetfulness of what you owed to yourself and family, and be despised and hated by all who have a regard for you.—­This, monsieur, continued she, is what I cannot bear, neither for your sake nor my own, and entreat you will no farther urge a suit, which all manner of considerations forbid me to comply with.

The firmness and resolution with which she uttered these words, threw him into the most violent despair; and here might be seen the difference between a sincere and counterfeited passion:  the one is timid, fearful of offending, and modest even to its own loss;—­the other presuming, bold, and regardless of the consequences, presses, in spight of opposition, to its desired point.

Louisa had too much penetration not to make this distinction:  she saw the truth of his affection in his grief, and that awe which deterred him from expressing what he felt:—­she sympathized in all his pains, and for every sigh his oppressed heart sent forth, her own wept tears of blood; yet not receding from the resolution she had formed, nothing could be more truly moving than the scene between them.

At length he ceased to mention marriage, but conjured her to consider the snares which would be continually laid, by wicked and designing men, for one so young and beautiful:—­that she could go no where without finding other Bellfleurs; and she might judge, by the danger she had just now so narrowly escaped, of the probability of being involved again in the same:—­he represented to her, in the most pathetic terms, that her innocence could have no sure protection but in the arms of a husband, or the walls of a convent; and on his knees beseeched her, for the sake of that virtue which she so justly prized, since she would not accept of him for the one, to permit him to place her in that other only asylum for a person in her circumstances.

Difficult was it for her to resist an argument, the reason of which she was so well convinced of, and could offer nothing in contradiction to, but that she had a certain aversion in her nature to receive any obligations from a man who had declared himself her lover, and who might possibly hereafter presume upon the favours he had done her.

It was in vain he complained of her unjust suspicion in this point, which, to remove, he protested to her that he would leave the choice of the monastry wholly to herself:  that in whatever part she thought would be most agreeable, he would conduct her; and that, after she was entered, he would not even attempt to see her thro’ the grate, without having first received her permission for his visit.  Not all this was sufficient to assure her scrupulous delicacy:  she remained constant in her determination; and all he could prevail on her, was leave to attend her as far as Leghorn, to secure her from any second attempt the injurious count might possibly make.