Pamela, Volume II by Samuel Richardson
page 63 of 732 (08%)
page 63 of 732 (08%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
the resentment even of such a poor girl as I. I will _pity_ thee,
base and abject as thou art. And she who is the object of my _pity_ is surely beneath my _anger_." Such were then my thoughts, my proud thoughts, so far was I from being guilty of _intentional_ meanness in forgiving, at Mr. B.'s interposition, the poor, low, creeping, abject _self_-mortified, and _master_-mortified, Mrs. Jewkes. And do you think, ladies, when you revolve in your thoughts, _who_ I was, and _what_ I was, and what I had been _designed_ for; when you revolve the amazing turn in my favour, and the prospects before me (so much above my hopes, that I left them entirely to Providence to direct for me, as it pleased, without daring to look forward to what those prospects seemed naturally to tend); when I could see my haughty persecutor become my repentant protector; the lofty spirit that used to make me tremble, and to which I never could look up without awe, except in those animating cases, where his guilty attempts, and the concern I had to preserve my innocence, gave a courage more than natural to my otherwise dastardly heart: when this impetuous spirit could stoop to request one whom he had sunk beneath even her usual low character of his servant, who was his prisoner, under sentence of a ruin worse than death, as he had intended it, and had seized her for that very purpose, could stoop to acknowledge the vileness of that purpose; could say, at one time, that my forgiveness of Mrs. Jewkes should stand me in greater stead than I was aware of: could tell her, before me, that she must for the future shew me all the respect due to one he must love; at another, acknowledged before her, that he had been stark naught, and that I was very forgiving; again, to Mrs. Jewkes, putting himself on a level with her, as to guilt, "We are |
|