voice and look were full of irrepressible
tenderness when he spoke these words; and at the same time
he laid gently hold on her hand, which she did not withdraw
from him; to say the truth, she hardly knew what she did or
suffered. A few moments now passed in silence between these
lovers, while his eyes were eagerly fixed on Sophia, and
hers declining toward the ground; at last she recovered
strength enough to desire him again to leave her, for that
her certain ruin would be the consequence of their being
found together; adding:

'Oh, Mr. Jones, you know not, you know not what hath passed
this cruel afternoon.'

'I know all, my Sophia,' answered he; 'your cruel father
hath told me all, and he himself hath sent me hither to
you.'

'My father sent you to me!' replied she: 'sure you dream!'

'Would to Heaven,' cried he, 'it was but a dream. Oh!
Sophia, your father hath sent me to you, to be an advocate
for my odious rival, to solicit you in his favor. I took
any means to get access to you. O, speak to me, Sophia!
Comfort my bleeding heart. Sure no one ever loved, ever
doted, like me. Do not unkindly withhold this dear, this
soft, this gentle hand--one moment perhaps tears you
forever from me. Nothing less than this cruel occasion
could, I believe, have ever conquered the respect and love
with which you have inspired me.'

She stood a moment silent, and covered with confusion;
then, lifting up her eyes gently towards him, she cried:

'What would Mr. Jones have me say?'

We would seem to have here a writer not quite in his native
element. He intends to interest us in a serious situation.
Sophia is on the whole natural and winning, although one may
stop to imagine what kind of an agony is that which allows of so
mathematical a division of time as is implied in the statement
that she looked at her lover--tenderly, too, forsooth!--"almost
a minute." The mood of mathematics and the mood of emotion, each
excellent in itself, do not go together in life as they do in
eighteenth century fiction. But in the general impression she
makes, Sophia, let us concede, is sweet and realizable. But
Jones, whom we have long before this scene come to know and be
fond of--Jones is here a prig, a bore, a dummy. Sir Charles
Grandison in all his woodenness is not arrayed like one of
these. Consider