To Miss Montague, Rose-hill, Berkshire.
Bellfield, Sept. 20.
No, Emily, you never loved; I have been long hurt by your
tranquillity in regard to our marriage; your too scrupulous attention
to decorum in leaving my sister's house might have alarmed me, if love
had not placed a bandage before my eyes.
Cruel girl! I repeat it; you never loved; I have your friendship,
but you know nothing of that ardent passion, that dear enthusiasm,
which makes us indifferent to all but itself: your love is from the
imagination, not the heart.
The very professions of tenderness in your last, are a proof of your
consciousness of indifference; you repeat too often that you love me;
you say too much; that anxiety to persuade me of your affection, shews
too plainly you are sensible I have reason to doubt it.
You have placed me on the rack; a thousand fears, a thousand doubts,
succeed each other in my soul. Has some happier man--
No, my Emily, distracted as I am, I will not be unjust: I do not
suspect you of inconstancy; 'tis of your coldness only I complain: you
never felt the lively impatience of love; or you would not condemn a
man, whom you at least esteem, to suffer longer its unutterable
tortures.
If there is a real cause for this delay, why conceal it from me?
have I not a right to know what so nearly interests me? but what cause?
are you not mistress of yourself?
My Emily, you blush to own to me the insensibility of your heart:
you once fancied you loved; you are ashamed to say you were mistaken.
You cannot surely have been influenced by any motive relative to our
fortune; no idle tale can have made you retract a promise, which
rendered me the happiest of mankind: if I have your heart, I am richer
than an oriental monarch.
Short as life is, my dearest girl, is it of consequence what part we
play in it? is wealth at all essential to happiness?
The tender affections are the only sources of true pleasure; the
highest, the most respectable titles, in the eye of reason, are the
tender ones of friend, of husband, and of father: it is from the dear
soft ties of social love your Rivers expects his felicity.
You have but one way, my dear Emily, to convince me of your
tenderness: I shall set off for Rose-hill in twelve hours; you must
give me your hand the moment I arrive, or confess your Rivers was never
dear to you.
Write, and send a servant instantly to meet me at my mother's house
in town: I cannot support the torment of suspense.
There is not on earth so wretched a being as I am at this moment; I
never knew till now to what excess I loved: you must be mine, my Emily,
or I must cease to live.