s letter certainly left
no cheering or comfortable impression upon my mind.

Now my good uncle knew as much of love as L. Mummius did of the fine
arts,* and it was impossible to persuade him that if one wanted to
indulge the tender passion, one woman would not do exactly as well as
another, provided she were equally pretty. I knew therefore that he was
incapable, on the one hand, of understanding my love for Isora, or, on
the other, of acknowledging her claims upon me. I had not, of course,
mentioned to him the generous imprudence which, on the news of my wound,
had brought Isora to my house: for if I had done so, my uncle, with the
eye of a courtier of Charles II., would only have seen the advantage to
be derived from the impropriety, not the gratitude due to the devotion;
neither had I mentioned this circumstance to Aubrey,--it seemed to me
too delicate for any written communication; and therefore, in his advice
to delay my marriage, he was unaware of the necessity which rendered the
advice unavailing. Now then was I in this dilemma, either to marry, and
that _instanter_, and so, seemingly, with the most hasty and the most
insolent decorum, incense, wound, and in his interpretation of the act,
contemn one whom I loved as I loved my uncle; or, to delay the marriage,
to separate Isora, and to leave my future wife to the malignant
consequences that would necessarily be drawn from a sojourn of weeks
in my house. This fact there was no chance of concealing; servants
have more tongues than Argus had eyes, and my youthful extravagance had
filled my whole house with those pests of society. The latter measure
was impossible, the former was most painful. Was there no third
way?--there was that of a private marriage. This obviated not every
evil; but it removed many: it satisfied my impatient love; it placed
Isora under a sure protection; it secured and established her honour
the moment the ceremony should be declared; and it avoided the seeming
ingratitude and indelicacy of disobeying my uncle, without an effort
of patience to appease him. I should have time and occasion then, I
thought, for soothing and persuading him, and ultimately winning that
consent which I firmly trusted I should sooner or later extract from his
kindness of heart.

* A Roman consul, who, removing the most celebrated remains of Grecian
antiquity to Rome, assured the persons charged with conveying them that,
if they injured any, they should make others