’The marchioness being much indisposed, the young lady, attended by her Camilla, was carried to Naples; where it is supposed she now is.  Poor young lady, how has she been hurried about!—­But who can think of her cousin Laurana without extreme indignation?

’Mrs. Beaumont writes, that the bishop would fain have prevailed upon his brother, the general, to join with him in an invitation to Sir Charles Grandison to come over, as a last expedient, before they locked her up either in a nunnery, or in some private house:  but the general would by no means come into it.

’He asked, What was proposed to be the end of Sir Charles’s visit, were all that was wished from it to follow, in his sister’s restored mind?—­He never, he said, would give his consent that she should be the wife of an English Protestant.

’The bishop declared, that he was far from wishing her to be so:  but he was for leaving that to after-consideration.  Could they but restore his sister to her reason, that reason, co-operating with her principles, might answer all their hopes.

’He might try his expedient, the general said, with all his heart:  but he looked upon the Chevalier Grandison to be a man of art; and he was sure he must have entangled his sister by methods imperceptible to her, and to them; but yet more efficacious to his ends, than an open declaration.  Had he not, he asked, found means to fascinate Olivia, and as many women as he came into company with?—­For his part, he loved not the Chevalier.  He had forced him by his intrepidity to be civil to him:  but forced civility was but a temporary one.  It was his way to judge of causes by the effects:  and this he knew, that he had lost a sister, who would have been a jewel in the crown of a prince; and would not be answerable for consequences, if he and Sir Charles Grandison were once more to meet, be it where it would.

’Father Marescotti, however, joining, as the bishop writes, with him, and the marchioness, in a desire to try this expedient; and being sure that the marquis and Signor Jeronymo would not be averse to it, he took a resolution to write over to him, as has been related.’

This, Lucy, is the state of the unhappy case, as briefly and as clearly as my memory will serve to give it.  And what a rememberer, if I may make a word, is the heart!—­Not a circumstance escapes it.

And now it remained for me to know of Sir Charles what answer he had returned.

Was not my situation critical, my dear?  Had Sir Charles asked my opinion, before he had taken his resolutions, I should have given it with my whole heart, that he should fly to the comfort of the poor lady.  But then he would have shewn a suspense unworthy of Clementina; and a compliment to me; which a good man, so circumstanced, ought not to make.