Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/296

 him experience the pleasures which arise from delicate and successful love. "When first Dorimene heard of this design, she was a little ruffled, and could not forbear making the answer I have already related to you; namely, that she supposed this was the reason her brother was treated with such contempt. But, however, she carried her resolution so far, that at last she thought she could bear to see us married with tolerable patience: and, when everything was concluded on, the fear lest she should reveal her thoughts made her force herself to congratulate us with more good-humour than I had seen her show from the time I had refused Vieuville. But in that very instant Dumnont's look, and the return he made to her obliging compliment on the subject his soul most delighted in the thoughts of, awakened all her former passion; and dreadful experience taught her that to his absence alone she owed all her boasted philosophy. "That very evening she took to her bed; and the violent agitations of her mind threw her into that fever which gave us all so much affliction, and had like to have cost her her life; but she recovered of that distemper of her body only to feel that much more terrible one of her mind. She began to think she had sacrificed enough to virtue in what she had already suffered; and when the idea of Dumont's being about to be given to another forced itself on her fancy, rage and madness succeeded, and all the most desperate actions appeared as trifles to her in comparison of seeing that fatal day. Sometimes she resolved to tell him of her love; but then the sense of shame worked so strongly on her, that she abandoned that thought, and fancied she could suffer the utmost misery rather than submit to so infamous an action. The remembrance of the Marquis de Stainville's unparalleled love for her, and the sense of her duty to him, for a moment enabled her to form