Your uncle, your Lucy, your Nancy:  Happy family!  All harmony! all love! 
—­How do they?

I wiped my eyes.

Is there any service in my power to do them, or any of them?  Command me, good Miss Byron, if there be:  my Lord W——­ and I are one.  Our influence is not small.—­Make me still more happy, in the power of serving any one favoured by you.

You oppress me, sir, by your goodness!—­I cannot speak my grateful sensibilities.

Will you, my dear Mr. Reeves, will you, madam, (to my cousin,) employ me in any way that I can be of use to you, either abroad or at home?  Your acquaintance has given me great pleasure.  To what a family of worthies has this excellent young lady introduced me!

O, sir! said Mrs. Reeves, tears running down her cheeks, that you were not to leave people whom you have made so happy in the knowledge of the best of men!

Indispensable calls must be obeyed, my dear Mrs. Reeves.  If we cannot be as happy as we wish, we will rejoice in the happiness we can have.  We must not be our own carvers.—­But I make you all serious.  I was enumerating, as I told you, my present felicities:  I was rejoicing in your friendships.  I have joy; and, I presume to say, I will have joy.  There is a bright side in every event; I will not lose sight of it:  and there is a dark one; but I will endeavour to see it only with the eye of prudence, that I may not be involved by it at unawares.  Who that is not reproached by his own heart, and is blessed with health, can grieve for inevitable evils; evils that can be only evils as we make them so?  Forgive my seriousness:  my dear friends, you make me grave.  Favour me, I beseech you, my good Miss Byron, with one lesson:  we shall be too much engaged, perhaps, by and by.

He led me (I thought it was with a cheerful air; but my cousins both say, his eyes glistened) to the harpsichord:  He sung unasked, but with a low voice; and my mind was calmed.  O, Lucy!  How can I part with such a man?  How can I take my leave of him?—­But perhaps he has taken his leave of me already, as to the solemnity of it, in the manner I have recited.

LETTER XXVII

Miss Byron.—­In continuation
Saturday morning, April 15.

O, Lucy, Sir Charles Grandison is gone!  Gone indeed!  He set out at three this morning; on purpose, no doubt, to spare his sisters, and friends, as well as himself, concern.

We broke not up till after two.  Were I in the writing humour which I have never known to fail me till now, I could dwell upon a hundred things, some of which I can now only briefly mention.

Dinner-time yesterday passed with tolerable cheerfulness:  every one tried to be cheerful.  O what pain attends loving too well, and being too well beloved!  He must have pain, as well as we.

Lady Olivia was the most thoughtful, at dinnertime; yet poor Emily!  Ah, the poor Emily! she went out four or five times to weep; though only I perceived it.