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duct; every hope relative to you—hopes which but now raised my soul to heaven, I will relinquish. How I acted in consequence of this determination you know; but you know not, nor can I give you any adequate idea of the anguish which I endured in consequence of it—the anguish which I felt at observing the resentment that glowed upon your cheek, and sparkled in your eye at the idea of my being either deceitful or capricious; scarcely on witnessing it, could I withhold myself from kneeling at your feet, and fully explaining the motives of my conduct. You may wonder, perhaps, at my not revealing myself on hearing of the Countess de Merville's kind intentions towards me; I was prevented doing so, by an idea of her being, notwithstanding all her worth, too proud, like the rest of the French noblesse, to think of bestowing her Madeline—she, whose graces, whose loveliness fitted her for the most exalted station, upon the son of a peasant, when once she had discovered his origin: to disclose my situation I