Interrupting him--Indifference let it be--you have not (in my opinion at least) deserved that it should be other: if you have in your own, you have cause (at least your pride has) to hate me for misjudging you.
Dearest, dearest creature! snatching my hand with fierceness, let me beseech you to be uniformly noble! Civil regards, Madam!--Civil regards! --Can you so expect to narrow and confine such a passion as mine?
Such a passion as yours, Mr. Lovelace, deserves to be narrowed and confined. It is either the passion you do not think it, or I do not. I question whether your mind is capable of being so narrowed and so widened, as is necessary to make it be what I wish it to be. Lift up your hands and your eyes, Sir, in silent wonder, if you please; but what does that wonder express, what does it convince me of, but that we are not born for one another.
By my soul, said he, and grasped my hand with an eagerness that hurt it, we were born for one another: you must be mine--you shall be mine [and put his other hand round me] although my damnation were to be the purchase!
I was still more terrified--let me leave you, Mr. Lovelace, said I; or do you be gone from me. Is the passion you boast of to be thus shockingly demonstrated?
You must not go, Madam!--You must not leave me in anger--
I will return--I will return--when you can be less violent--less shocking.
The man quite frighted me; insomuch, that when I got into my chamber, I found a sudden flow of tears a great relief to me.
In half an hour, he sent a little billet, expressing his concern for the vehemence of his behaviour, and prayed to see me.
I went. Because I could not help myself, I went.
He was full of excuses--O my dear, what would you, even you, do with such a man as this; and in my situation?
It was very possible for him now, he said, to account for the workings of a beginning phrensy. For his part, he was near distraction. All last week to suffer as he had suffered; and now to talk of civil regards only, when he had hoped, from the nobleness of my mind--
Hope what you will, interrupted I, I must insist upon it, that our minds are by no means suited to each other. You have brought me into difficulties. I am deserted by every friend but Miss Howe. My true sentiments I will not conceal--it is against my will that I must submit to owe protection from a brother's projects, which Miss Howe thinks are not given over, to you, who have brought me into these straights: not with my own concurrence brought me into them; remember that--