lieve me, break from your arms, and quarrel with your fondness!

JULIA
If your thoughts should assume so unhappy a bent, you will the more
want some mild and affectionate spirit to watch over and console you:
one who, by bearing your infirmities with gentleness and resignation,
may teach you so to bear the evils of your fortune.

FAULKLAND
Julia, I have proved you to the quick! and with this useless device I
throw away all my doubts. How shall I plead to be forgiven this last
unworthy effect of my restless, unsatisfied disposition?

JULIA
Has no such disaster happened as you related?

FAULKLAND
I am ashamed to own that it was pretended; yet in pity, Julia, do not
kill me with resenting a fault which never can be repeated: but
sealing, this once, my pardon, let me to-morrow, in the face of Heaven,
receive my future guide and monitress, and expiate my past folly by
years of tender adoration.

JULIA
Hold, Faulkland!--that you are free from a crime, which I before feared
to name, Heaven knows how sincerely I rejoice! These are tears of
thankfulness for that! But that your cruel doubts should have urged you
to an imposition that has wrung my heart, gives me now a pang more keen
than I can express!

FAULKLAND
By Heavens! Julia----

JULIA
Yet hear me,--My father loved you, Faulkland! and you preserved the
life that tender parent gave me; in his presence I pledged my
hand--joyfully pledged it--where before I had given my heart. When,
soon after, I lost that parent, it seemed to me that Providence had, in
Faulkland, shown me whither to transfer without a pause, my grateful
duty, as well as my affection; hence I have been content to bear from
you what pride and delicacy would have forbid me from another. I will
not upbraid you, by repeating how you have trifled with my sincerity
----

FAULKLAND
I confess it all! yet hear----

JULIA
After such a year of trial, I might have flattered myself that I should
not have been insulted with a new probation of my sincerity, as cruel
as unnecessary! I now see it is not in your nature to be content or
confident in love. With this conviction--I never will be yours. While I
had hopes that my persevering attention, and unreproaching kindness,
might in time reform your temper, I should have been happy to have
gained a dearer influence over you; but I will not furnish you with a
licensed power to keep alive an incorrigible fault, at the expense of
one who never would contend with