Page:Francesca Carrara 2.pdf/163

160 "There are exceptions, dearest, and such I hope is for thee. You have known early care, and soon-coming sorrow. As a very child you were the stay of our little household; and how, in our late worldly experience, your own kind and true heart has led you aright! You look meekly forward—you exert yourself for others—your affections are hard to be chilled—and your belief in good, paramount. Fate forms its predestined wretches of other materials."

"I now understand," continued Francesca, "the reason of our grandfather's dislike to Englishmen. How I ought to rejoice that some, I will venture to say, providence enabled me to overrule the weak tenderness which urged me to be Robert Evelyn's companion! His real nature would soon have shewn its baseness; and, holy Madonna! to have made such discovery as his wife!"

"Had your mother so refused to participate in Lord Avonleigh's concealment, how much misery would have been spared! Do you remember that line in the English poet—whom we now keep for his own sake, no longer for that of his donor—where that loving and sweet Viola says,—