"In the warmth of your eulogium on Captain Walsingham, you seem, Amelia,
to forget that you reflect, in the most severe manner, upon yourself:
for what woman, what young woman especially, who has either delicacy,
pride, or prudence, can avow that she loves a man, who has never given,
even by her own statement of the matter, the slightest reason to believe
that he thinks of her?"

Amelia stood abashed, and for some instants incapable of reply: but at
last, approaching her mother, and hiding her face, as she hung over her
shoulder, she said, in a low and timid voice, "It was only to my
mother--I thought that could not be wrong--and when it was to prevent a
greater wrong, the engaging myself to another person."

"Engaging yourself, my foolish child! but did I not tell you that you
should have your own time?"

"But no time, mother, will do."

"Try, my dear love; that is all I ask of you; and this you cannot, in
duty, in kindness, in prudence, or with decency, refuse me."

"Cannot I?"

"Indeed you cannot. So say not a word more that can lessen the high
opinion I have of you; but show me that you have a becoming sense of
your own and of female dignity, and that you are not the poor,
mean-spirited creature, to pine for a man who disdains you."

"Disdain! I never saw any disdain. On the contrary, though he never gave
me reason to think so, I cannot help fancying----"