Returned she, a little slackening her pace,
will you pretend to have given no occasion for the reproach you have
received: - great must have been your professions to draw on you a
resentment such as I have been witness of; - but I shall take care to
give the lady, whoever she is, no farther room for jealousy on my
account; and as for mademoiselle Sanserre, I believe the stock of
reputation she has will not suffer much from the addition of one more
favourite to the number the world has already given her.
The oddness of this adventure, and the vexation he was in to find
Charlotta seemed incensed against him for a crime of which he knew
himself so perfectly innocent, destroyed at once all the considerations
his timidity had inspired, and aiming only to be cleared in her
opinion; - if there be faith in man, cried he, I know nothing of what I
am accused: no woman but your charming self ever had the power to give
me an uneasy moment; - it is you alone have taught me what it is to love,
and as I never felt, I never pretended to that passion for any other.
Me! replied Charlotta, extremely confused; If it were so, you take a
strange time and method to declare it in; - but I know of no concern I
have in your amours, your gratitude, or your perfidy; and you had better
follow and endeavour to appease your enraged mistress, than lose your
time on me in vain excuses.
Ah mademoiselle! cried he, how unjust and cruel are you, and how severe
my fate, which not content with the despair my real unworthiness of
adoring you has plunged me in, but also adds to it an imputation of
crimes my soul most detests: - I never heard even the name of the lady
you mentioned till your lips pronounced it; and if it be she I danced
with, I protest I never saw her face: and as for the meaning of the
other lady's treatment of me, it must certainly be occasioned by some
mistake, having offered nothing to any of the sex that could justify
such a proceeding.
All the time he was speaking Charlotta was endeavouring to compose
herself. - The hurry of spirits she had been in at the apprehensions of
Horatio's having any amorous engagements, shewing her how much interest
she took in him, made her blush at having discovered herself to him so
far; and tho' she could not be any more tranquil, yet she thought she
would for the future be more prudent; to this end she now affected to
laugh at the dilemma into which she told him he had brought himself, by
making addresses in two places at the same time, and advised him in a
gay manner to be more circumspect.
