ABSTRACT
Davenant had heard Lord Danesforte repeatedly declare, that of all the women he had ever seen, Ethelinde was the loveliest. ‘And if,’ said his Lordship, ‘I was a marrying man, I should prefer her to all others for a wife.’ These sort of speeches from a man whose taste was universally acknowledged, and whose manners and opinions were the objects of Davenant’s imitation, had a great effect on him; and he began to consider whether he might not himself obtain Ethelinde, whose beauty his eyes had acknowledged, though he was insensible of her superior attractions. In consequence of this idea, he became suddenly very solicitous about her health; and heard, with great apparent concern, that in consequence of her accident she had a cold, attended with a great degree of fever. Sir Edward, whom these symptoms threw into real agonies, had on their first appearance sent for the best advice the country afforded; but Ethelinde, who by no means believed herself so ill as his fears made him imagine, was notwithstanding glad of an opportunity to remain a few days in her own room, where she was plentifully supplied with books; and where Sir Edward, unable to resist the pleasure of being with her, and fancying that Lady Newenden noticed it not, sat with her sometimes for an hour, and renewed those conversations which she so much preferred to the mixed, desultory, and uninstructive trifling of the large party below. On the accident she reflected with no other sensation than that of gratitude to her gallant deliverer, and concern for the terror her friends had on her account suffered. Her acknowledgments to Heaven were rather for the preservation of a life dear and necessary to her father, than because it appeared to her to be of great value. The quickness of her feelings had already taught her, that its pains were greater than its pleasures; and, naturally cheerful as her temper was, a sort of presentiment of future misfortune frequently gave a cast of sadness to her mind, and oppressed a heart hitherto unconscious of those passions which prey so forcibly on acute sensibility. This disposition she had made it a point of duty to check in the presence of her father; but now she yielded to it almost imperceptibly; and the moments she passed with Sir Edward were particularly tinctured with this tender melancholy – which, delicious as it was to both, was full of danger to him; who, escaping from vapid and irksome company, found it doubly delightful to lay out his whole soul in the soft and sensible society of Ethelinde.
