O, my uncle!  I am afraid of you:  but spare the poor girl:  she acknowledges her petulance, her presumption.  The occasion you know, and will pity her for it!  However, neither petulance nor presumption shall make her declare as her sentiments what really are not so, in her unprejudiced hours; and she hopes to have her heart always open to conviction.

For the present, Adieu, my Lucy.

P.S.  Dr. Bartlett tells me, that Mr. Beauchamp is at Calais, waiting the pleasure of his father; and that Sir Harry has sent express for him, as at his lady’s motion.

LETTER X

Miss Byron.—­In continuation
Tuesday, April 4.

Sir Charles Grandison came to town last night.  He was so polite as to send to inquire after my health; and to let Mr. Reeves know, that he would do himself the honour, as he called it, of breakfasting with him this morning.  Very ceremonious either for his own sake or for mine—­ Perhaps for both.

So I am in expectation of seeing within this half-hour, the noble Clementina’s future—­Ah Lucy!

The compliment, you see, is to Mr. Reeves—­Shall I stay above, and see if he will ask for me?  He owes me something for the emotion he gave me in Lord L——­’s library.  Very little of him since have I seen.

‘Honour forbids me,’ said he, then:  ’Yet honour bids me.—­But I cannot be ungenerous, selfish.’—­These words are still in my ear.—­What could he mean by them?—­Honour forbids me—­What! to explain himself?  He had been telling me a tender tale:  he had ended it.  What did honour forbid him to do?—­Yet honour bids me!  Why then did he not follow the dictates of honour?

But I cannot be unjust:—­To Clementina he means.  Who wished him to be so?—­Unjust!  I hope not.  It is a diminution to your glory, Sir Charles Grandison, to have the word unjust, in this way of speaking, in your thoughts!  As if a good man had lain under a temptation to be unjust; and had but just recollected himself.

‘I cannot be ungenerous.’  To the noble lady, I suppose?  He must take compassion on her.  And did he think himself under an obligation to my forwardness to make this declaration to me, as to one who wished him to be ungenerous to such a lady for my sake!—­I cannot bear the thought of this.  Is it not as if he had said, ’Fond Harriet, I see what you expect from me—­But I must have compassion for, I cannot be ungenerous to, Clementina!’—­But, what a poor word is compassion!  Noble Clementina!  I grieve for you, though the man be indeed a generous man!—­O defend me, my better genius, from wanting the compassion even of a Sir Charles Grandison!

But what means he by the word selfish!  He cannot be selfish!—­I comprehend not the meaning of this word—­Clementina has a very high fortune—­Harriet but a very middling one.  He cannot be unjust, ungenerous to Clementina—­Nor yet selfish—­This word confounds me, from a man that says nothing at random!