If--! You won my whole soul the very first moment I saw you! Not a word
or action of mine but what has proclaimed the burning impatience of my
passion!
True: the burning impatience--Your eagerness to assent will not suffer
you to examine. Your opinions and principles are those which the world
most highly approves, and applauds: mine are what it daily calls
extravagant, impracticable, and absurd. It would be weak in me to
expect you should implicitly receive remote truths, so contradictory to
this general practice, till you have first deeply considered them. I
ask no such miracle. But if I can but turn your mind to such
considerations, if I can but convince you how inestimable they are,
even to yourself as well as to the world at large, I shall then have
effected my purpose.
Of that, madam, be sure--You shall see!--Upon my honour, you shall!--I
will order a fur-cap, a long gown, a white wand, and a pair of sandals
this very day! No Grecian ever looked more grave than I will! Nay, if
you desire it, razor shall never touch my chin more.
Well, well; equip yourself speedily, and I will provide you with a
wooden dish, a lanthorn, and a tub.
But then, having made your conditions, you now grant me your consent?
That is obliging me once more to put on my serious face--The danger in
which I so lately saw you hangs heavily on my mind; that and the warm
passions by which it was occasioned.
And my excess of ardour, to demonstrate my love, you regard as a proof
of my having none.
How passion overshoots itself! Your conclusion is as precipitate as was
your proof.
I cannot be cool, madam, on this subject. I wonder to see you so! Did
affection throb and burn in your bosom, as it does in mine, I am
persuaded it would be otherwise.
We are neither of us so entirely satisfied with each other as we ought
to be, to induce either me to consent or you to apply to Sir Arthur.