ll knowledge of the negotiation in which he was
engaged on Clive's behalf. If my gentle reader has had sentimental
disappointments, he or she is aware that the friends who have given
him most sympathy under these calamities have been persons who have
had dismal histories of their own at some time of their lives, and
I conclude Colonel Newcome in his early days must have suffered very
cruelly in that affair of which we have a slight cognisance, or he would
not have felt so very much anxiety about Clive's condition.

A few chapters back and we described the first attack, and Clive's
manful cure: then we had to indicate the young gentleman's relapse, and
the noisy exclamations of the youth under this second outbreak of fever.
Calling him back after she had dismissed him, and finding pretext after
pretext to see him,--why did the girl encourage him, as she certainly
did? I allow, with Mrs. Grundy and most moralists, that Miss Newcome's
conduct in this matter was highly reprehensible; that if she did not
intend to marry Clive she should have broken with him--altogether;
that a virtuous young woman of high principle, etc. etc., having once
determined to reject a suitor, should separate from him utterly then and
there--never give him again the least chance of a hope, or reillume the
extinguished fire in the wretch's bosom.

But coquetry, but kindness, but family affection, and a strong, very
strong partiality for the rejected lover--are these not to be taken in
account, and to plead as excuses for her behaviour to her cousin? The
least unworthy part of her conduct, some critics will say, was that
desire to see Clive and be well with him: as she felt the greatest
regard for him, the showing it was not blameable; and every flutter
which she made to escape out of the meshes which the world had cast
about her was but the natural effort at liberty. It was her prudence
which was wrong; and her submission wherein she was most culpable. In
the early church story, do we not read how young martyrs constantly had
to disobey worldly papas and mammas, who would have had them silent, and
not utter their dangerous opinions? how their parents locked them up,
kept them on bread-and-water, whipped and tortured them in order to
enforce obedience?--nevertheless they would declare the truth: they
would defy the gods by law established, and deliver themselves up to the
lions or the tormentors. Are not there Heathen Idols enshrined among us
still?