; that you should judge for yourself, in a matter of the highest importance to you, is the voice of reason and of nature; I blush for those parents who have thought otherwise.
"I would not even, with a view to this particular case, obtrude my advice; in general you have heard my opinion before, that the violence which we have been accustomed to apply to love, is not always necessary towards happiness in marriage; at the same time, that it is a treason of the highest kind in a woman to take him for her husband, whom a decent affection has not placed in that situation, whence alone she should chuse one. But my Harriet has not merely been taught sentiments; I know she has learned the art of forming them; and here she shall be trusted entirely to her own."
The feelings of Harriet on this proposal, and the manner in which her father communicated it, were of so tender a kind, that she could not restrain her tears. There wanted, indeed, but little to induce her to confess all that had passed with Sindall, and throw herself on the clemency of her indulgent parent. Had she practised this sincerity, which is the last virtue we should ever part with, how happy had it been! But it required a degree of fortitude, as well as softness, to make this discovery; besides, that her seducer had, with the tenderest entreaties, and assurances of a speedy reparation of her injuries, prevailed on her to give him something like a promise of secrecy.
Her answer to this offer of Mr. Rawlinson's, expressed her sense of the obligation she lay under to him, and to her father; she avowed an esteem for his character equal to its excellence, but that it amounted not to that tender regard which she must feel for the man whom she could think of making her husband.
Rawlinson received his friend's account of this determination without discomposure. He said he knew himself well enough to believe that Miss Annesly had made an honest and a proper declaration; and begged to have an interview with herself, to show her that he conceived not the smallest resentment at her refusal, which, on the contrary, though it destroyed his hopes, had encreased his veneration for her.
"Regard me not, said he to her when they met, with that aspect of distance, as if you had offended or affronted me; let me not lose that look of kindness which, as the friend of your father and yourself, I have formerly experienced. I confess there is one disparity