Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/259

 and that delicacy in his behaviour, which only could have completed the happiness of such a heart as hers; but which it is impossible ever to attain where the love is not perfectly mutual.

"I denied myself the pleasure of ever seeing her, lest I should be the cause of any disturbance between them; but my caution was all in vain; for she, poor soul, endeavoured to raise his gratitude, and increase his love, by continually reminding him of her long and faithful passion, even from her first acquaintance with him; till at last, by these means, she put it into his head that my love for my friend was the cause of my refusing and treating him ill. This thought roused a fury in his breast; all decency and ceremony gave way to rage; and, from thinking her fondness had been his curse, by preventing his having the woman he liked, she soon became the object of his hatred rather than his love; and he could not forbear venting continual reproaches against her for having thus gained him. Poor Juliè did not long survive this usage, but languished a short time in greater misery than I can express, and then lost her life and the sense of her misfortunes together. "This was the first real affliction I had ever felt; I had loved Juliè from her infancy, and I now looked upon myself to have been the cause of all her sorrows; nor could I help, in some measure, blaming my own actions, for I had always dreaded the consequence of thus in a manner betraying a man into matrimony. And although perhaps it may be something a more excusable frailty, yet it certainly is as much a failure in point of virtue, and as great a want of resolution, to indulge the inclination of our friends to their ruin, as it is to gratify our own; or, to speak more properly, to people who are capable of friendship, it is only more exquisite and refined way of giving