Fanny Burney

“ I abandon the post of honour, in leaving the benefactor, the supporter, the preserver of my orphan existence, to perpetual chains, if not to massacre!—Or I break the tender heart of the gentlest, purest, and most beloved of sisters!"
Lady Aurora, now, looked all consternation; and, after a disturbed pause, "If you think it wrong," she cried, "not to sacrifice yourself,—Oh my sister! let not mere commiseration for my weakness lead you astray! We all know there is another world, in which we yet may meet again!"
"Angel! angel!" cried Juliet, pressing Lady Aurora to her bosom. ”

“ Since that period, whom have you seen, whom noticed, except Ellis! Ellis! Ellis! From the first moment that you have beheld her, she has seemed the mistress of your destiny, the arbitress of your will. My boon, then, Harleigh, my boon! without a moment's further delay! Appease the raging ferment in my veins; clear away every surmize; and generously, honestly say 'tis Ellis!—or it is another, and not Ellis, I prefer to you!"
"Elinor! Elinor!" cried Harleigh, in a universal tremour, "it is I that you will make mad!" ”

“ Yet, at the first sound, he returned to the window; whence he perceived Juliet just arrived upon the threshold; looking like a picture of death, and leaning upon a chambermaid, to whom she clung as to a bosom friend; yet not attempting to resist the foreigner; who, on her other side, dragged her by the arm, in open triumph. But, when she came to the chaise-step, she staggered, her vital powers seemed forsaking her; she heaved a hard and painful sigh, and, but for the chamber-maid, who knelt down to catch her, had fallen upon the ground. ”

“ Ah, my lord, let this unhappy morning be blotted from both our memories! and let me go back to the morning of yesterday! to a partiality that made,—and that makes me so happy! to a goodness, a kindness, that revive me with heart-consoling gratitude!"
"Oh, incomparable—Oh, best Miss Ellis!" cried Lord Melbury, in a transport of joy, and passionately advancing; but retreating nearly at the same instant, as if fearful of alarming her; and almost fastening himself against the opposite wainscoat; "how excessive is your goodness!" ”

“ I scorn and defy the whole human race, yet doom myself to be numbered in its community. While you, Albert Harleigh, you whom alone, of all that live and breath, I prize,—you, even your sight, I, from this moment, eternally renounce! Such the mighty ascendance of the passion which you have inspired, that I will sooner forego that only blessing—though the universe without it is a hateful blank to my eyes—than risk opposing the sway of your opinion, or suffer you to think me ignoble, though you know me to be enslaved. ”

“ The storm, now, again kindled in her disordered mind: "How!" she cried, "have I done all this—dared, risked, braved all things human,—and not human—to die, at last, a common death?—to expire, in a fruitless journey, an unacknowledged, and unoffered sacrifice?—or to lie down tamely in my bed, till I am extinct by ordinary dissolution?—"
Wringing then her hands, with mingled anguish and resentment, "Mr. Naird," she cried, "if you have the smallest real skill; the most trivial knowledge or experience in your profession; bind up my wound so as to give me strength to speed to him! ”

“ Juliet could only shed tears, though tears so delicious, that it was luxury to shed them. Lady Aurora would have kissed them from her cheeks; but her own mingled with them so copiously, that it was not possible; and though the smiles of expressive joy that brightened each countenance, shewed their sensibility to be but fulness of happiness, the meeting, the acknowledgment, with the throbbing recollection of all that was passed, so touched each gentle heart, that they could but weep and embrace, embrace and weep, alternately. ”

“ Elinor, now, from mingled wonder, satisfaction, and scorn, recovered all her wonted vivacity. "You are really, and bona fide, contented, then," she cried, "to be shut up as completely from Harleigh, through his horrour of that wowoman's irascible temper, as if you were separated by bolts, bars, dungeons, towers, and bastilles? I applaud your taste, and wish you the full enjoyment of its fruits! Yet what materials you can be made of, to see the first of men at your feet, and voluntarily to fly him, to be trampled under by those of the most odious of women, I cannot divine! ”

“ May not all air be peopled with our departed friends, hovering around us, as sensible as we are unconscious? May not the uncumbered soul watch over those it loves? find again those it had lost? be received in the Heaven of Heavens, where it is destined,—not, Oh wretched idea!—to eternal sleep, inertness, annihilating dust;—but to life, to joy, to sweetest reminiscence, to tenderest re-unions, to grateful adoration to intelligence never ending! Oh! Elinor! keep for ever in mind, that if no mortal is gifted to prove that this is true,—neither is any one empowered to prove that it is false! ”

“ A paleness like that of death overspread her face.
"What is it," cried Harleigh, inexpressibly alarmed, "what is it Elinor means?"
"To re-conquer, by the courage of my death, the esteem I may leave forfeited by my jealousy, my envy, my littleness in life! You only could have corrected my errours; you, by your ascendance over my feelings, might have refined them into virtues. Oh, Harleigh! weigh not alone my imperfections when you recollect my attachment! but remember that I have loved you so as woman never loved!" ”

“ She feared being suspected of a mere puerile effort, to frighten from Harleigh an offer of his hand, in menacing what she had not courage, nor, perhaps, even intention to perform.
This suggestion was intolerable: she blushed with shame as it crossed her mind. She shook with passion, as she considered, that such might be the disgraceful opinion, that might tarnish the glory that she meant to acquire, by dying at the feet of the object of her adoration, at the very moment of yielding to the happier star of an acknowledged rival; a willing martyr to successless, but heroick love. ”

“ Yet how was I tried,—Oh Sir Jaspar! how cruelly! in resisting to present myself to my family! in forbearing to pronounce the kind appellation of brother! the soft, tender title of sister! Oh! in their sight, when witnessing their goodness, when blest by their kindness, and urged by the most generous sweetness to confidence, how violent, how indescribable have been my struggles, to withhold from throwing myself into their arms, with the fair, natural openness of sisterly affection! ”

“ Stilled, Elinor?—What mean you? By annihilation?—How an infidel assumes fortitude to wish for death, is my constant astonishment! To believe in the eternal loss of all he holds, or knows, or feels; to be persuaded that 'this sensible, warm being,' will 'melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,'—and to believe that there all ends! Surely every species of existence must be preferable to such an expectation from its cessation! ”

“ Turning, then, with quickness to Juliet, while pride and shame dried her eyes, "Ellis," she said, "let him not know I murmur!—Let not his last hearing of Elinor be disgrace! Tell him, on the contrary, that his friendship shall not be thrown away; nor his arguments be forgotten, or unavailing: no! I will weigh every opinion, every sentiment that has fallen from him, as if every word, unpolluted by human ignorance or infirmity, had dropt straight from heaven! I will meditate upon religion: I will humble myself to court resignation. ”

“ Juliet stood motionless, pale, almost livid, and appearing nearly as unable to think as to speak. But the feelings of Harleigh were as much too actively alive, as hers seemed morbid. Agitation beat in every pulse, flowed in every vein, throbbed even visibly in his heart, which bounded with tumultuous triumph, that Juliet, now, was liberated from all adverse engagements: and though he sought, and meant, to turn his eyes, with tender pity, upon Elinor, they stole involuntarily, impulsively, glances of exstatic felicity at the mute and appalled Juliet. ”

“ Believing herself alone, and in a place of which the stillness suited her desire of solitude and concealment, she had already shut the door before she saw her mistake. What, then, was her astonishment, what her emotion, when she discerned, seated, and examining a part of the hangings, at the further end of the gallery, the gentle form of Lady Aurora Granville!
Sudden transport, though mingled with a thousand apprehensions, instantly converted every dread that could depress into every hope that could revive her. ”

“ The task of consolation seemed now to devolve upon Gabriella: the feelings of Juliet, long checked by prudence, by fortitude, by imperious necessity; and kept in dignified but hard command; having once found a vent, bounded back to nature and to truth, with a vivacity of keen emotion that made them nearly uncontrollable. Nature and truth,—which invariably retain an elastic power, that no struggles can wholly subdue; and that always, however curbed, however oppressed,—lie in wait for opportunity to spring back to their rights. ”

“ She now easily conceived why kindness was so touching to her; yet how any angry sensation could find its way in the breast of Miss Joddrel, or of any human being, against such sweetness and such excellence, her gentle mind, free from every feeling of envy, jealousy, or wrath, could form no conjecture. She sighed to withdraw her from a house where her merits were so ill appreciated; and could hardly persuade herself to speak to any one else at the table, from the eagerness with which she desired to dispel the gloom produced by Elinor's cloudy brow. ”