- This, monsieur, continued she, is what I cannot bear, neither for
your sake nor my own, and entreat you will no farther urge a suit, which
all manner of considerations forbid me to comply with.
The firmness and resolution with which she uttered these words, threw
him into the most violent despair; and here might be seen the difference
between a sincere and counterfeited passion: the one is timid, fearful
of offending, and modest even to its own loss; - the other presuming,
bold, and regardless of the consequences, presses, in spight of
opposition, to its desired point.
Louisa had too much penetration not to make this distinction: she saw
the truth of his affection in his grief, and that awe which deterred him
from expressing what he felt: - she sympathized in all his pains, and for
every sigh his oppressed heart sent forth, her own wept tears of blood;
yet not receding from the resolution she had formed, nothing could be
more truly moving than the scene between them.
At length he ceased to mention marriage, but conjured her to consider
the snares which would be continually laid, by wicked and designing men,
for one so young and beautiful: - that she could go no where without
finding other Bellfleurs; and she might judge, by the danger she had
just now so narrowly escaped, of the probability of being involved again
in the same: - he represented to her, in the most pathetic terms, that
her innocence could have no sure protection but in the arms of a
husband, or the walls of a convent; and on his knees beseeched her, for
the sake of that virtue which she so justly prized, since she would not
accept of him for the one, to permit him to place her in that other only
asylum for a person in her circumstances.
Difficult was it for her to resist an argument, the reason of which she
was so well convinced of, and could offer nothing in contradiction to,
but that she had a certain aversion in her nature to receive any
obligations from a man who had declared himself her lover, and who might
possibly hereafter presume upon the favours he had done her.
It was in vain he complained of her unjust suspicion in this point,
which, to remove, he protested to her that he would leave the choice of
the monastry wholly to herself: that in whatever part she thought would
be most agreeable, he would conduct her; and that, after she was
entered, he would not even attempt to see her thro' the grate, without
having first received her permission for his visit.
