'Hear me on,' he continued, 'I beseech you! By my plainness only I can shew my sincerity. For these Relations, then, permit me to plead. It is true, I am independent: my actions are under no control; but these are ties from which we are never emancipated; ties which cling to our nature, and which, though voluntary, are imperious, and cannot be broken or relinquished, without self-reproach; ties formed by the equitable laws of fellow-feeling; which bind us to our family, which unites us with our friends; and which, by our own expectations, teach us what is due to our connexions. Ah, then, if ever brighter prospects may open to my eyes, let me see them sullied, by mists hovering over the approbation of those with whom I am allied!' 'How just,' cried Ellis, trying to force a smile, 'yet how useless is this reasoning! I cannot combat sentiments in which I concur; yet I can change nothing in a plan to which they must have no reference! I am sorry to appear ungrateful, where I am only steady; but I have nothing new to say; and must entreat you to dispense with fruitless repetitions. Already, I fear, I am beyond the hour of my engagement.' She was now departing. 'You distract me!' cried he, with vehemence, 'you distract me!' He caught her gown, but, upon her stopping, instantly let it go. Pale and affrighted, 'Mr Harleigh,' she cried, 'is it to you I must own a scene that may raise wonder and surmises in the house, and aggravate distresses and embarrassments which, already, I find nearly intolerable?' Shocked and affected, he shut the door, and would impetuously, yet tenderly, have taken her hand; but, upon her shrinking back, with displeasure and alarm, he more quietly said, 'Pardon! pardon! and before you condemn me inexorably to submit to such rigorous disdain and contempt--' 'Why will you use such words? Contempt?--Good heaven!' she began, with an emotion that almost instantly subsided, and she added, 'Yet of what consequence to you ought to be my sensations, my opinions?' They can avail you nothing! Let me go,--and let me conjure you to be gone!' 'You are then decided against me?' cried he, in a voice scarcely articulate. 'I am,' she answered, without looking at him, but calmly. He bowed, with an air that relinquished all further attempt to detain her; but which shewed him too much wounded to speak. Carefully still avoiding his eyes, she was moving off; but, when she touched the lock of the door, he exclaimed, 'Will you not, at least, before you go, allow me to address a few words to you as a friend? simply,--undesignedly,--only as a friend?' 'Ah! Mr Harleigh!' cried Ellis, irresistibly softened, 'as a friend could I, indeed, have trusted you, I might long since,--perhaps,--have confided in your liberality and benevolence: but now, 'tis wholly impossible!'