Her own then fell, in tender commiseration, and it was with extreme repugnance she compelled herself to take such measures as she thought her duty required. She sealed the two letters in an empty cover, and having directed them to Mr. Bellamy, summoned Molly Mill, and told her to convey them to the gentleman, and positively acquaint him she must receive no more, and that those which were returned had never been read. She bid her, however, add, that she should always wish for his happiness, and be grateful for his kind partiality; though she earnestly conjured him to vanquish a regard which she did not deserve, and must never return. Molly Mill would fain have remonstrated; but Eugenia, with that firmness which, even in the first youth, accompanies a consciousness of preferring duty to inclination, silenced, and sent her off. Relieved for herself, now the struggle was over, she secretly rejoiced that it was not for Melmond she had so hard a part to act: and this idea, while it rendered Bellamy less an object of regret, diminished also something of her pity for his conflict, by reminding her of the success which had attended her own similar exertions. But when Molly returned, her distress was renewed: she brought her these words, written with a pencil upon the back of her own cover: 'I do not dare, cruellest of your sex, to write you another letter; but if you would save me from the abyss of destruction, you will let me hear my final doom from your own mouth. I ask nothing more! Ah! walk but one moment in the park, near the pales; deny not your miserable adorer this last single request, and he will fly this fatal climate which has swallowed up his repose for ever! But, till then, here he will stay, and never quit the spot whence he sends you these lines, till you have deigned to pronounce verbally his doom, though he should famish for want of food! ALPHONSO BELLAMY.' Eugenia read this with horrour and compassion. She imagined he perhaps thought her confined, and would therefore believe no answer that did not issue immediately from her own lips. She sent Molly to him again with the same message; but Molly returned with a yet worse account of his desperation, and a strong assurance, that if she would only utter to him a single word, he would obey, depart, and live upon it the rest of his life. This completely softened her. Rather than imperiously suffer such a pattern of respectful constancy to perish, she consented to speak her own negative. But fearing she might be moved to some sympathy by his grief, she resolved to be accompanied by Camilla, and deferred, therefore, the interview till the next day. Molly brought back his humble acknowledgments for this concession, and an account that, at last, slowly and sadly, he had ridden away.