When we broke up, he handed my cousin Reeves into her coach.  He handed me.  Mr. Reeves said, We see you again, Sir Charles, in the morning?  He bowed.  At handing me in, he sighed—­He pressed my hand—­I think he did—­ That was all—­He saluted nobody.  He will not meet his Clementina as he parted with us.

But, I doubt not, Dr. Bartlett was in the secret.

He was.  He has just been here.  He found my eyes swelled.  I had had no rest; yet knew not, till seven o’clock, that he was gone.

It was very good of the doctor to come:  his visit soothed me:  yet he took no notice of my red eyes.  Nay, for that matter, Mrs. Reeves’s eyes were swelled, as well as mine.  Angel of a man! how is he beloved!

The doctor says, that his sisters, their lords, Lord W——­, are in as much grief as if he were departed for ever—­And who knows—­But I will not torment myself with supposing the worst:  I will endeavour to bear in mind what he said yesterday morning to us, no doubt for an instruction, that he would have joy.

And did he then think that I should be so much grieved as to want such an instruction?—­And, therefore, did he vouchsafe to give it?—­But, vanity, be quiet—­Lie down, hope—­Hopelesness, take place!  Clementina shall be his.  He shall be hers.

Yet his emotion, Lucy, at mentioning Lady D——­’s visit—­O! but that was only owing to his humanity.  He saw my emotion; and acknowledged the tenderest friendship for me!  Ought I not to be satisfied with that?  I am.  I will be satisfied.  Does he not love me with the love of mind?  The poor Olivia has not this to comfort herself with.  The poor Olivia! if I see her sad and afflicted, how I shall pity her!  All her expectations frustrated; the expectations that engaged her to combat difficulties, to travel, to cross many waters, and to come to England—­to come just time enough to take leave of him; he hastening on the wings of love and compassion to a dearer, a deservedly dearer object, in the country she had quitted, on purpose to visit him in his—­Is not hers a more grievous situation than mine?—­It is.  Why, then, do I lament?

But here, Lucy, let me in confidence hint, what I have gathered from several intimations from Dr. Bartlett, though as tenderly made by him as possible, that had Sir Charles Grandison been a man capable of taking advantage of the violence of a lady’s passion for him, the unhappy Olivia would not have scrupled, great, haughty, and noble, as she is, by birth and fortune, to have been his, without conditions, if she could not have been so with:  The Italian world is of this opinion, at least.  Had Sir Charles been a Rinaldo, Olivia had been an Armida.

O that I could hope, for the honour of the sex, and of the lady who is so fine a woman, that the Italian world is mistaken!—­I will presume that it is.