ABSTRACT
Sir Edward Newenden and Montgomery journeyed rapidly towards London, but neither of them were inclined to conversation, and as they approached the town their mutual uneasiness and anxiety seemed to encrease: Sir Edward remembered the strange situation in which he had left his family; his wife absent, mourning over the effects of that vengeance which he had been compelled to take on Lord Danesforte, his children without their mother, his own actions perhaps misrepresented; while his conscience, unaccustomed hitherto to allow him any great latitude, represented to him in forcible colours the error he had committed in yielding to the first impulse of ungovernable affection, and hastening at such a time to Ethelinde. The reproaches he made himself on this head served however to strengthen the resolution he had made, not to conquer his passion for her, for that he felt to be out of his power, but to preclude the possibility of its doing her farther injury, by quitting the only satisfaction he ever promised himself, that of seeing her and loving her in silence, reserving only the right of a guardian to serve and befriend her by the interposition of others.
