Adieu, my Lucy.

LETTER XXXIV

Miss Byron, to sir Rowland Meredith
Wednesday, April 19.

It was with great pleasure that I received, this day, the kindest Letter that ever was written by a real father to his dearest child.  I was resolved that I would not go to rest till I had acknowledged the favour.

How sweet is the name of father to a young person who, out of near one-and-twenty years of life, has for more than half the time been bereaved of hers; and who was also one of the best of men!

You gave me an additional pleasure in causing this remembrance of your promised paternal goodness to be given me by Mr. Fowler in person.  Till I knew you and him, I had no father, no brother.

How good you are in your apprehensions that there may be a man on whom your daughter has cast her eye, and who cannot look upon her with the same distinction—­O that I had been near you when you wrote that sweetly-compassionating, that indulgent passage!  I would have wiped the tears from your eyes myself, and reverenced you as my true father.

You demand of me, as my father, a hint, or half a hint, as you call it, to be given to my brother Fowler; or if not to him, to you.  To him, whom I call father, I mean all the duty of a child.  I call him not father nominally only:  I will, irksome as the subject is, own, without reserve, the truth to you—­[In tenderness to my brother, how could I to him?]—­ There is a man whom, and whom only, I could love as a good wife ought to love her husband.  He is the best of men.  O my good Sir Rowland Meredith! if you knew him, you would love him yourself, and own him for your son.  I will not conceal his name from my father:  Sir Charles Grandison is the man.  Inquire about him.  His character will rise upon you from every mouth.  He engaged first all your daughter’s gratitude, by rescuing her from a great danger and oppression; for he is as brave as he is good:  and how could she help suffering a tenderness to spring up from her gratitude, of which she was never before sensible to any man in the world?  There is something in the way, my good sir; but not that proceeds from his slights or contempts.  Your daughter could not live, if it were so.  A glorious creature is in the way! who has suffered for him, who does suffer for him:  he ought to be hers, and only hers; and if she can be recovered from a fearful malady that has seized her mind, he probably will.  My daily prayers are, that God will restore her!

But yet, my dear sir, my friend, my father! my esteem for this noblest of men is of such a nature, that I cannot give my hand to any other:  my father Meredith would not wish me to give a hand without a heart.