第136章[第1页/共3页]

“My manners must have been in fault,but not intentionally,I assure you.I never meant to deceive you,but my spirits might often lead me wrong.How you must have hated me after that evening?”

“The letter,perhaps,began in bitterness,but it did not end so. The adieu is charity itself.But think no more of the letter.The feelings of the person who wrote,and the person who received it, are now so widely different from what they were then,that every unpleasant circumstance attending it ought to be forgotten.You must learn some of my philosophy.Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”

“Had you then persuaded yourself that I should?”

“Oh! do not repeat what I then said.These recollections will not do at all. I assure you that I have long been most heartily ashamed of it.”

“The letter shall certainly be burnt,if you believe it essential to the preservation of my regard;but,though we have both reason to think my opinions not entirely unalterable, they are not, I hope,quite so easily changed as that implies.”

“I was certainly very far from expecting them to make so strong an impression.I had not the smallest idea of their being ever felt in such a way.”

“Indeed I had.What will you think of my vanity?I believed you to be wishing,expecting my addresses.”