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Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan — Volume 01 by Thomas Moore
page 57 of 398 (14%)
many, in proportion as she became devoted to the love of one, she
adopted, early in 1772, the romantic resolution of flying secretly to
France and taking refuge in a convent,--intending, at the same time, to
indemnify her father, to whom she was bound till the age of 21, by the
surrender to him of part of the sum which Mr. Long had settled upon her.
Sheridan, who, it is probable, had been the chief adviser of her flight,
was, of course, not slow in offering to be the partner of it. His
sister, whom he seems to have persuaded that his conduct in this affair
arose solely from a wish to serve Miss Linley, as a friend, without any
design or desire to take advantage of her elopement, as a lover, not
only assisted them with money out of her little fund for house-expenses,
but gave them letters of introduction to a family with whom she had been
acquainted at St. Quentin. On the evening appointed for their
departure,--while Mr. Linley, his eldest son, and Miss Maria Linley,
were engaged at a concert, from which the young Cecilia herself had
been, on a plea of illness, excused,--she was conveyed by Sheridan in a
sedan-chair from her father's house in the Crescent, to a post-chaise
which waited for them on the London road, and in which she found a woman
whom her lover had hired, as a sort of protecting Minerva, to accompany
them in their flight.

It will be recollected that Sheridan was at this time little more than
twenty, and his companion just entering her eighteenth year. On their
arrival in London, with an adroitness which was, at least, very
dramatic, he introduced her to an old friend of his family, (Mr. Ewart,
a respectable brandy-merchant in the city,) as a rich heiress who had
consented to elope with him to the Continent;--in consequence of which
the old gentleman, with many commendations of his wisdom for having
given up the imprudent pursuit of Miss Linley, not only accommodated the
fugitives with a passage on board a ship, which he had ready to sail
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