This, Madame, Added He, Is The Unpleasing Task My Promise Bound Me To Perform, And Which I Have Acquitted Myself Of With The Same Pain That Man Would Do Who, By Some Strange Caprice Of Fate, Was Constrained To Throw Into The Sea The Sum Of All His Hopes.

The indignation which filled the virtuous foul of Louisa, while he was giving her this detail of the count's presumption, falsehood, and ingratitude, prevented her from giving much attention to the apology with which he concluded.

Never, since the behaviour of mr. B - - n at mrs. C - g - 's, had she met with any thing that she thought so much merited her resentment: - so great was her disdain she had not words to express it, but by some tears, which the rising passion forced from her eyes: - Heaven! cried she, which of my actions has drawn on me this unworthy treatment? - This was all she was able to utter, while she walked backward and forward in the room endeavouring to compose herself, and form some answer befitting of the message.

Monsieur du Plessis looked on her all this while with admiration: all that seemed lovely in her, when he knew no more of her than that she was young and beautiful, was now heightened in his eyes almost to divine, by that virtuous pride which shewed him some part of her more charming mind. What he extremely liked before, he now almost adored; and having, by the loose manner in which the count had mentioned these two English ladies, imagined them women of not over-rigid principles, now finding his mistake, at least as concerning one of them, was so much ashamed and angry with himself for having been the cause of that disorder he was witness of, that he for some moments was equally at a loss to appease, as she who felt was to express it.

But being the first that recovered presence of mind; madame, I beseech you, said he, involve not the innocent with the guilty: - I acknowledge you have reason to resent the boldness of the count; but I am no otherwise a sharer in his crime than in reporting it; and if you knew the pain it gave my heart while I complied with the promise I was unhappily betrayed into, I am sure you would forgive the misdemeanor of my tongue.

Sir, answered she, I can easily forgive the slight opinion one so much a stranger to me as yourself may have of me; but monsieur the count has been a constant visitor to the lady I am with, ever since our arrival at Venice; and am very certain he never found any thing in my behaviour to him or any other person, which could justly encourage him to send me such a message: - a message, indeed, equally affrontive to himself, since it shews him a composition of arrogance, vanity, perfidy, and every thing that is contemptible in man. - This, sir, is the reply I send him, and desire you to tell him withal, that if he persists in giving me any farther trouble of this nature, I shall let him know my sense of it in the presence of Melanthe.

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