Page:Precaution; a novel by Cooper, James Fenimore.djvu/316

304 me, Lady Harriet, I am innocent. Indeed—indeed, as anything more than an agreeable acquaintance I have never allowed myself to think of your brother:' and from my soul I believe her. We continued our conversation for half an hour longer, and such was the ingenuousness, delicacy, and high religious feeling displayed by the charming girl, that if I entered the room with a spark of regret that I was compelled to solicit another to favor my brother's love, I left it with a feeling of sorrow that my efforts had been unsuccessful. Yes! thou peerless sister of the more peerless Pendennyss! I once thought of your ladyship as a wife for Derwent"—

A glass of water was necessary to enable the reader to clear her voice, which grew husky from speaking so long.

"But I now openly avow, neither your birth, your hundred thousand pounds, nor your merit, would put you on a footing, in my estimation, with my Emily. You may form some idea of her power to captivate, and of her indifference to her conquests, when I mention that she once refused—but I forget, you don't know him, and therefore cannot be a judge. The thing is finally decided, and we shortly go into Westmoreland, and next week the Moseleys return to Northamptonshire. I don't know when I shall be able to visit you, and think I may now safely invite you to Denbigh Castle, although a month ago I might have hesitated. Love to the earl, and kind assurance to yourself of unalterable regard.

"P. S. I believe I forgot to mention that Mrs. Moseley, a sister of Lord Chatterton, has gone to Portugal, and that the peer himself is to go into the country with us: there is, I suppose, a fellow-feeling between them just now though I do not think Chatterton looks so very miserable as he might. Adieu."

On ending this second epistle the same silence which had succeeded the reading of the first prevailed, until the lady with an arch expression, interrupted it by saying,—