Your own time, doctor:  but I must say, that whenever you give me Lady Olivia’s story, I shall be pained, if I find that a Clementina is considered by a beauty of an unhappier turn, as her rival in the love of Sir Charles Grandison.

Lady Olivia, madam, admires him for his virtue; but she cannot, as he has made it his study to do, divide admiration from love.  What offers has she not refused?—­But she declares, that she had rather be the friend of Sir Charles Grandison, than the wife of the greatest prince on earth.

This struck me:  Have not I said something like it?  But surely with innocence of heart.  But here the doctor suggests, that Olivia has put his virtue to the proof:  Yet I hope not.

The friend, Dr. Bartlett!—­I hope that no woman who is not quite given up to dishonour, will pollute the sacred word, by affixing ideas to it, that cannot be connected with it.  A friend is one of the highest characters that one human creature can shine in to another.  There may be love, that though it has no view but to honour, yet even in wedlock, ripens not into friendship.  How poor are all such attachments!  How much beneath the exalted notion I have of that noblest, that most delicate union of souls!  You wonder at me, Dr. Bartlett.  Let me repeat to you, sir, (I have it by heart,) Sir Charles Grandison’s tender of friendship to the poor Harriet Byron, which has given me such exalted ideas of this disinterested passion; but you must not take notice that I have.  I repeated those words, beginning, ’My heart demands alliance with hers’—­and ending with these—­’So long as it shall be consistent with her other attachments.’*

* See page 110 of this Volume.

The doctor was silent for a few moments.  At last, What a delicacy is there in the mind of this excellent man!  Yet how consistent with the exactest truth!  The friendship he offers you, madam, is indeed friendship.  What you have repeated can want no explanation:  yet it is expressive of his uncertain situation.  It is—­

He stopt of a sudden.

Pray, doctor, proceed:  I love to hear you talk.

My good young lady!—­I may say too much.  Sir Charles in these nice points must be left to himself.  It is impossible for any body to express his thoughts as he can express them.  But let me say, that he justly, as well as greatly, admires Miss Byron.

My heart rose against myself.  Bold Harriet, thought I, how darest thou thus urge a good man to say more than he has a mind to say of the secrets of a friend, which are committed to his keeping?  Content thyself with the hopes, that the worthiest man in the world would wish to call thee his, were it not for an invincible obstacle.  And noble, thrice noble Clementina, be thine the preference even in the heart of Harriet Byron, because justice gives it to thee; for, Harriet, hast thou not been taught to prefer right and justice to every other consideration?  And, wouldst thou abhor the thought of a common theft, yet steal an heart that is the property, and that by the dearest purchase, of another?