girl, not always neither;
for did you not once (if I might presume to look back to those happy,
happy times), when you were sitting on my knee as usual, embracing and
embraced, and I asked if you could not love me at last, did you not make
answer, in the softest tones that ever man heard, 'I COULD EASILY SAY
SO, WHETHER I DID OR NOT; YOU SHOULD JUDGE BY MY ACTIONS!' Was I to
blame in taking you at your word, when every hope I had depended on your
sincerity? And did you not say since I came back, 'YOUR FEELINGS TO ME
WERE THE SAME AS EVER?' Why then is your behaviour so different?" S.
"Is it nothing, your exposing me to the whole house in the way you did
the other evening?" H. "Nay, that was the consequence of your cruel
reception of me, not the cause of it. I had better have gone away last
year, as I proposed to do, unless you would give some pledge of your
fidelity; but it was your own offer that I should remain. 'Why should I
go?' you said, 'Why could we not go on the same as we had done, and say
nothing about the word FOREVER?'" S. "And how did you behave when
you returned?" H. "That was all forgiven when we last parted, and your
last words were, 'I should find you the same as ever' when I came home?
Did you not that very day enchant and madden me over again by the purest
kisses and embraces, and did I not go from you (as I said) adoring,
confiding, with every assurance of mutual esteem and friendship?" S.
"Yes, and in your absence I found that you had told my aunt what had
passed between us." H. "It was to induce her to extort your real
sentiments from you, that you might no longer make a secret of your true
regard for me, which your actions (but not your words) confessed." S.
"I own I have been guilty of improprieties, which you have gone and
repeated, not only in the house, but out of it; so that it has come to
my ears from various quarters, as if I was a light character. And I am
determined in future to be guided by the advice of my relations, and
particularly of my aunt, whom I consider as my best friend, and keep
every lodger at a proper distance." You will find hereafter that her
favourite lodger, whom she visits daily, had left the house; so that she
might easily make and keep this vow of extraordinary self-denial.
Precious little dissembler! Yet her aunt, her best friend, says, "No,
Sir, no; Sarah's no hypocrite!" which I was fool enough to believe; and
yet my great and unpardonable offence