SANDFORD The violence of the sudden mischance hath so wrought in him, who by nature is allied to nothing less than a self-debasing humour of dejection, that I have never seen any thing more changed and spirit-broken.  He hath, with a peremptory resolution, dismissed the partners of his riots and late hours, denied his house and person to their most earnest solicitings, and will be seen by none.  He keeps ever alone, and his grief (which is solitary) does not so much seem to possess and govern in him, as it is by him, with a wilfulness of most manifest affection, entertained and cherished.

MARGARET
How bears he up against the common rumour?

SANDFORD With a strange indifference, which whosoever dives not into the niceness of his sorrow might mistake for obdurate and insensate.  Yet are the wings of his pride for ever clipt; and yet a virtuous predominance of filial grief is so ever uppermost, that you may discover his thoughts less troubled with conjecturing what living opinions will say, and judge of his deeds, than absorbed and buried with the dead, whom his indiscretion made so.

MARGARET I knew a greatness ever to be resident in him, to which the admiring eyes of men should look up even in the declining and bankrupt state of his pride.  Fain would I see him, fain talk with him; but that a sense of respect, which is violated, when without deliberation we press into the society of the unhappy, checks and holds me back.  How, think you, he would bear my presence?

SANDFORD As of an assured friend, whom in the forgetfulness of his fortunes he past by.  See him you must; but not to-night.  The newness of the sight shall move the bitterest compunction and the truest remorse; but afterwards, trust me, dear lady, the happiest effects of a returning peace, and a gracious comfort, to him, to you, and all of us.

MARGARET I think he would not deny me.  He hath ere this received farewell letters from his brother, who hath taken a resolution to estrange himself, for a time, from country, friends, and kindred, and to seek occupation for his sad thoughts in travelling in foreign places, where sights remote and extern to himself may draw from him kindly and not painful ruminations.

SANDFORD I was present at the receipt of the letter.  The contents seemed to affect him, for a moment, with a more lively passion of grief than he has at any time outwardly shewn.  He wept with many tears (which I had not before noted in him) and appeared to be touched with a sense as of some unkindness; but the cause of their sad separation and divorce quickly recurring, he presently returned to his former inwardness of suffering.

MARGARET The reproach of his brother’s presence at this hour should have been a weight more than could be sustained by his already oppressed and sinking spirit.—­Meditating upon these intricate and wide-spread sorrows, hath brought a heaviness upon me, as of sleep.  How goes the night?