Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady

Good Heaven, how strange the recital! how incomprehensible an affair! The Miss Belmont then who is actually at Bristol, passes for the daughter of my unhappy mother!-passes, in short, for your Evelina! Who she can be, or what this tale can mean, I have not any idea.

Mrs. Selwyn soon after left me to my own reflections. Indeed they were not very pleasant. Quietly as I had borne her relation, the moment I was alone I felt most bitterly both the disgrace and sorrow of a rejection so cruelly inexplicable.

I know not how long I might have continued in this situation, had I not been awakened from my melancholy reverie by the voice of Lord Orville. "May I come in," cried he, "or shall I interrupt you?"

I was silent, and he seated himself next me.

"I fear," he continued, "Miss Anville will think I persecute her: yet so much as I have to say, and so much as I wish to hear, with so few opportunities for either, she cannot wonder-and I hope she will not be offended-that I seize with such avidity every moment in my power to converse with her. You are grave," added he, taking my hand; "I hope the pleasure it gives to me, will not be a subject of pain to you? -You are silent!-Something, I am sure, has afflicted you:-would to Heaven I were able to console you!-Would to Heaven I were worthy to participate in your sorrows!"

My heart was too full to bear this kindness, and I could only answer by my tears. "Good Heaven," cried he, "how you alarm me!-My love, my sweet Miss Anville, deny me no longer to be the sharer of your griefs!-tell me, at least, that you have not withdrawn your esteem!-that you do not repent the goodness you have shown me!-that you still think me the same grateful Orville, whose heart you have deigned to accept!"

"Oh, my Lord," cried I, "your generosity overpowers me!" And I wept like an infant. For now, that all my hopes of being acknowledged seemed finally crushed, I felt the nobleness of his disinterested regard so forcibly, that I could scarce breathe under the weight of gratitude which oppressed me.

He seemed greatly shocked; and, in terms the most flattering, the most respectfully tender, he at once soothed my distress, and urged me to tell him its cause.

"My Lord," said I, when I was able to speak, "you little know what an outcast you have honoured with your choice!-a child of bounty,-an orphan from infancy,-dependant, even for subsistence, dependent, upon the kindness of compassion!-Rejected by my natural friends,-disowned for ever by my nearest relation,-Oh, my Lord, so circumstanced, can I deserve the distinction with which you honour me? No, no, I feel the inequality too painfully;-you must leave me, my Lord; you must suffer me to return to obscurity; and there, in the bosom of my first, best, my only friend,-I will pour forth all the grief of my heart!-while you, my Lord, must seek elsewhere-"