ABSTRACT
Though Letitia’s situation was exceedingly uncomfortable, from the insults of her brutal brother, yet her heart was now more and more cheered with a gleam of hope, like the sunshine through the wintry clouds. It appeared to her, from Sancho’s letters, that his master lamented her displeasure, as the misfortune, which made him shun society, and be indifferent to home. She every day heard / new instances of his virtues, and she could not reconcile them with the black treachery, of which he was accused. But the evidence of Miss Moody perplexed her, and the accounts which that lady so punctually received from him, indicated an intimacy and correspondence, which gave credit to her assurances. ‘Yet why should he expose himself to insult, from her family, to obtain an explanation? Why press so earnestly a suit, to the success of which he was indifferent? why should his servant relate so many affecting circumstances of his melancholy and despair, from the idea of my coldness and aversion? It cannot be otherwise; he must be true! He is still that honourable and generous youth, whom I once esteemed and loved: and whom even his enemies are constrained to applaud. I have been too precipitate: the dupe, perhaps, of the artifices of a woman, who never approved of his tenderness to me.’ /
