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handsome or charming in other respects he might be, for you could not love him, you should hate--despise-- pity--anything but love him--were not those your words?' `Yes, but--' `And did you not say that your affection must be founded on approbation; and that unless you could approve and honour and respect, you could not love?' `Yes, but I do approve and honour and respect--' `How so, my dear? is Mr Huntingdon a good man?' `He is a much better man than you think him.' `That is nothing to the purpose. Is he a good man?' `Yes--in some respects. He has a good disposition.' `Is he a man of principle?' `Perhaps not, exactly; but it is only for want of thought: if he had someone to advise him, and remind him of what is right--' `He would soon learn, you think--and you yourself would willingly undertake to be his teacher? But, my dear, he is, I believe, full ten years older than you--how is it that you are so beforehand in moral acquirements?' `Thanks to you, aunt, I have been well brought up, and had good examples always before me, which he, most likely, has not;--and besides, he is of a sanguine temperament, and a gays thought less temper, and I am naturally inclined to reflection.' `Well, now you have made him out to be deficient in both sense and principle, by your own confession--' `Then my sense and my principle are at his service!' `That sounds presumptuous, Helen! Do you think you have enough for both; and do you imagine your merry, thoughtless profligate would allow himself to be guided by a young, girl like you?' `No; I should not wish to guide him; but I think I might have influence sufficient to save him from some errors, and I should think my life well spent in the effort to preserve so noble a nature from destruction. He always listens attentively now, when I speak seriously to him (and I often venture to reprove his random way of talking), and sometimes he says that if he had me always by his side he should never do or say a wicked thing, and that a little daily talk with me would make him quite a saint. It may be partly jest and partly flattery, but still--' `But still you think it may be truth?' `If I do think there is any mixture of truth in it, it is not from confidence in my own powers, but in his natural goodness.--And you have no right to call him a profligate, aunt; he is nothing of the kind.' `Who told you so, my dear? bat was that story about his intrigue with a married lady--Lady who was it-- Miss Wilmot herself was telling you the other day?' `It was false--false!' I cried. `I don't believe a word of it.' `You think, then, that he is a virtuous, well-conducted young man?' |
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