Page:The Wanderer (1814 Volume 2).pdf/428

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modesty, not anxious doubt, that mantled in her cheek?

"Pity," he returned, "in a woman to a man, is grateful, is lenient, is consoling. It seems an attribute of her sex, and the haughtiest of ours accepts it from her without disdain or disgrace; but pity from a man—upon similar causes—must be confined to his own breast. Its expression always seems insolent. Who is the female that could wish, that could even bear to excite it? Not Elinor, certainly! with all her excentricities, she would consider it as an outrage."

"Give it her, then," cried Ellis, with involuntary vivacity, "the sooner to cure her!"

"Nay, who knows," he smilingly returned, "since extremes meet, that absconding may not produce the same effect? At all events, it will retard the execution of her terrible project; and to retard an act of voluntary violence, where the imagination is as ardent, the mind as restless, and the will as despotic