This was the first time that the gentlemen had met, since the day when Montreville had granted his fruitless sanction to the Colonel's suit. Delicacy prevented the father from touching upon the subject, and it was equally avoided by Hargrave, who had not yet determined in what light to represent his repulse. However, as it completely occupied the minds of both, the conversation, which turned on topics merely indifferent, was carried on with little spirit on either side, and was soon closed by Hargrave's taking leave, after begging permission to repeat his visit.
Colonel Hargrave had promised to spend that evening with the most beautiful woman in London; but the unexpected rencounter of the morning, left him in no humour to fulfil his engagement. He had found his Laura,--his lovely, his innocent Laura,--the object of his only serious passion,--the only woman whose empire reached beyond his senses. He had found her cautious, reserved, severe; yet feeling, constant, and tender. He remembered the overwhelming joy which made her sink fainting on his bosom; called to mind her ill-suppressed tears--her smothered sighs--her unbidden blushes; and a thousand times assured himself that he was passionately beloved. He triumphed the more in the proofs of her affection, because they were not only involuntary but reluctant; and, seen through the flattering medium of gratified pride, her charms appeared more than ever enchanting. On these charms he had formerly suffered his imagination to dwell, till to appropriate them seemed to him almost the chief end of existence; and, though in absence his frenzy had a little intermitted, his interview with Laura roused it again to double violence.
No passion of Hargrave's soul (and all his passions were of intense force), had ever known restraint, or control, or even delay of gratification, excepting only this, the strongest that had ever governed him. And must he now pine for eighteen lingering months, ere he attained the object of such ardent wishes? Must he submit, for a time that seemed endless, to the tyranny of this intolerable passion,--see the woman on whom he doated receive his protestations with distrust, and spite of her affection, shrink from his caresses with horror? No!--he vowed that if there were persuasion in man, or frailty in woman, he would shorten the period of his trial,--that he would employ for this purpose all the power which he possessed over Laura's heart, and, if that failed, that he would even have recourse to the authority of the father.