Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/92

84 Evelina is so shocked at the idea of an occasional fit of intoxication in her "noble, her unrivalled" lover, who does not acknowledge how natural were her feelings? Had Evelina been married six years, and the same lover, then her husband, been really guilty of what she suspected, who does not feel that it would have been very unnatural to have been shocked in the least at the occurrence? She would not have loved him less, nor admired him less, nor would he have been the less "the noble and the unrivalled,"—he would have taken his glass too much, have joked the next morning on the event, and the gentle Evelina would have made him a cup of tea! but that which would have been a matter of pleasantry in the husband, would have been matter of damnation in the lover!—But to return to Lucy.

If it be so hard, so repellent to believe a lover guilty even of a trivial error, we may readily suppose that Lucy never for a moment admitted the supposition that Clifford had been really guilty of gross error or wilful crime. True, that expressions in his letter were more than suspicious;