What a hard case is mine!--Could I but doubt, I know I could conquer.
--That which is an inducement to my friends, is none at all to me--How
often, my dearest Aunt, must I repeat the same thing?--Let me but be
single--Cannot I live single? Let me be sent, as I have proposed, to
Scotland, to Florence, any where: let me be sent a slave to the
Indies, any where--any of these I will consent to. But I cannot,
cannot think of giving my vows to man I cannot endure!

Well then, rising, (Bella silently, with uplifted hands, reproaching
my supposed perverseness,) I see nothing can prevail with you to
oblige us.

What can I do, my dearest Aunt Hervey? What can I do? Were I capable
of giving a hope I meant not to enlarge, then could I say, I would
consider of your kind advice. But I would rather be thought perverse
than insincere. Is there, however, no medium? Can nothing be thought
of? Will nothing do, but to have a man who is the more disgustful to
me, because he is unjust in the very articles he offers?

Whom now, Clary, said my sister, do you reflect upon? Consider that.

Make not invidious applications of what I say, Bella. It may not be
looked upon in the same light by every one. The giver and the
accepter are principally answerable in an unjust donation. While I
think of it in this light, I should be inexcusable to be the latter.
But why do I enter upon a supposition of this nature?--My heart, as I
have often, often said, recoils, at the thought of the man, in every
light.--Whose father, but mine, agrees upon articles where there is no
prospect of a liking? Where the direct contrary is avowed, all along
avowed, without the least variation, or shadow of a change of