Page:The Wanderer (1814 Volume 2).pdf/358

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ference to your opinions, or feelings.—Why, why," continued she, in a tone less firm, "why will you force from me such ungrateful words?—Why leave me no alternative between impropriety, or arrogance?"

"Why,—let me rather ask,—why must I find you for ever thus impenetrable, thus incomprehensible?—I will not, however, waste your patience. I see your eagerness to be gone.—Yet, in defiance of all the rigour of your scruples, you must bear to hear me avow, in my total ignorance of their cause, that I feel it impossible utterly to renounce all distant hope of clearer prospects.—How, then, can I quietly submit to see you enter into a career of public life, subversive—perhaps—to me, of even any eventual amelioration?"

Ellis blushed deeply as she answered, "If I depended, Sir, upon you,—if you were responsible for my actions; or if your own fame, or name, or sentiments were involved in my con-