If my gentle reader has had sentimental
disappointments, he or she is aware that the friends who have given him
most sympathy under these calamities have been persons who have had
dismal histories of their own at some time of their lives, and I conclude
Colonel Newcome in his early days must have suffered very cruelly in that
affair of which we have a slight cognisance, or he would not have felt so
very much anxiety about Clive's condition.
A few chapters back and we described the first attack, and Clive's manful
cure: then we had to indicate the young gentleman's relapse, and the
noisy exclamations of the youth under this second outbreak of fever.
Calling him back after she had dismissed him, and finding pretext after
pretext to see him,--why did the girl encourage him, as she certainly
did? I allow, with Mrs. Grundy and most moralists, that Miss Newcome's
conduct in this matter was highly reprehensible; that if she did not
intend to marry Clive she should have broken with him--altogether; that a
virtuous young woman of high principle, etc.
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