'Oh no, no, no!' cried she, hastily: 'if Miss Joddrel were not in existence,--' she checked herself, and sighed more deeply; but, presently added, 'Yet, surely, Miss Joddrel were cause sufficient!'
'You fill me,' he cried, 'with new alarm, new disturbance!--I supplicate you, nevertheless, to forego your present plan;--and to shew some little consideration to what I have to offer.--'
She interrupted him. 'I must be unequivocally, Sir,--for both our sakes,--understood. You must call for no consideration from me! I can give you none! You must let me pursue the path that my affairs, that my own perceptions, that my necessities point out to me, without interference, and without expecting from me the smallest reference to your opinions, or feelings.--Why, why,' continued she, in a tone less firm, 'why will you force from me such ungrateful words?--Why leave me no alternative between impropriety, or arrogance?'
'Why,--let me rather ask,--why must I find you for ever thus impenetrable, thus incomprehensible?--I will not, however, waste your patience. I see your eagerness to be gone.--Yet, in defiance of all the rigour of your scruples, you must bear to hear me avow, in my total ignorance of their cause, that I feel it impossible utterly to renounce all distant hope of clearer prospects.--How, then, can I quietly submit to see you enter into a career of public life, subversive--perhaps--to me, of even any eventual amelioration?'
Ellis blushed deeply as she answered, 'If I depended, Sir, upon you,--if you were responsible for my actions; or if your own fame, or name, or sentiments were involved in my conduct ... then you would do right, if such is your opinion, to stamp my project with the stigma of your disapprobation, and to warn me of the loss of your countenance:--but, till then, permit me to say, that the business which calls me away has the first claim to my time.'
'One moment,' cried he, earnestly, 'I conjure you!--The hurry of alarm, the certainty that delay would make every effort abortive; have precipitated me into the use of expressions that may have offended you. Forgive them, I entreat! and do not judge me to be so narrow minded; or so insensible to the enchantment of talents, and the witchery of genius; as not to feel as much respect for the character, where it is worthy, as admiration for the abilities, of those artists whose profession it is to give delight to the public. Had I first known you as a public performer, and seen you in the same situations which have shewn me your worth, I must have revered you as I do at this instant: I must have been devoted to you with the same unalterable attachment: but then, also,--if you would have indulged me with a hearing,--must I not have made it my first petition, that your accomplishments should be reserved for the resources of your leisure, and the happiness of your friends, at your own time, and your own choice? Would you have branded such a desire as pride? or would you not rather have allowed it to be called by that word, which your own every action, every speech, every look bring perpetually to mind, propriety?'