order
to promote and complete so desirable a reconciliation.'
I hurried it away without taking a copy of it; and I have ordered the
chariot-and-six to be got ready; and hey for M. Hall! Let me but know
how Belton does. I hope a letter from thee is on the road. And if the
poor fellow can spare thee, make haste, I command thee, to attend this
truly divine lady. Thou mayest not else see her of months perhaps; at
least, not while she is Miss HARLOWE. And oblige me, if possible, with
one letter before she sets out, confirming to me and accounting for this
generous change.
But what accounting for it is necessary? The dear creature cannot
receive consolation herself but she must communicate it to others. How
noble! She would not see me in her adversity; but no sooner does the sun
of prosperity begin to shine upon her than she forgives me.
I know to whose mediation all this is owing. It is to Colonel Morden's.
She always, as she says, loved and honoured him! And he loved her above
all his relations.
I shall now be convinced that there is something in dreams. The opening
cloud is the reconciliation in view. The bright form, lifting up my
charmer through it to a firmament stuck round with golden cherubims and
seraphims, indicates the charming little boys and girls, that will be the
fruits of this happy reconciliation. The welcomes, thrice repeated, are
those of her family, now no more to be deemed implacable. Yet are they
family, too, that my soul cannot mingle with.
But then what is my tumbling over and over through the floor into a
frightful hole, descending as she ascends? Ho! only this! it alludes to
my disrelish to matrimony: Which is a bottomless pit, a gulph, and I know
not what. And I suppose, had I not awoke in such a plaguy fright, I had
been soused into some river at the bottom of the hole, and then been
carried (mundified or purified from my past iniquities,) by the same
bright form (waiting for me upon the mossy banks,) to my beloved girl;
and we should have gone on cherubiming of it and caroling to the end of
the chapter.
But what are the black sweeping mantles and robes of Lord M. thrown over
my face? And what are those of the ladies? O Jack! I have these too:
They indicate nothing in the world but that my Lord will be so good as to
die, and leave me all he has. So, rest to thy good-natured soul, honest
Lord M.
Lady Sarah Sadleir and Lady Betty Lawrance, will also die, and leave m
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