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me immediately! It is but for an instant! Tell him it is but for an instant."
Ellis tremblingly drew back. The impatience of Elinor was redoubled, and Mr. Naird thought proper to confess that Mr. Harleigh could not be found.
Her vehemence was then converted into derision, and, with a contemptuous laugh, "You would make me believe, perhaps," she cried, "that he has left Brighthelmstone? Spare your ingenuity a labour so absurd, and my patience so useless a disgust. From me, indeed, he may be gone! for his soul shrinks from the triumph in which it ought to glory! 'Tis pity! Yet in him every thing seems right; every thing is becoming. Even the narrow feelings of prudence, that curb the expansions of greatness, in him seem graceful, nay noble! Ah! who is like him? The poor grovelling wretches that call themselves his fellow-creatures, sink into nothingness before him, as if beings of another order! Where is he? My soul sickens to see him once more, and then to be extinct!"
