Love in Excess; or, the Fatal EnquiryA Novel in Three Parts
at the fore-gate of the House, and bellow’d in the most terrible accent I could possible turn my Voice to, Fire, Fire, rise, or you will all be burnt in your Beds. I had not repeated this many times, before I found the Effect I wish’d; the Noises I heard, and the Lights I saw in the Rooms, assur’d me there were no Sleepers left; then I ran to the Tuilleries, designing to observe the Lover’s proceedings, but I found they were appriz’d of the Danger they were in, of being discover’d, and were coming to endeavour an entrance into the Garden. I know the rest, interrupted Alovisa, the Event has answer’d even beyond my Wishes, and thy Reward for this good Service shall be greater than thy Expectations. As she said these Words she retir’d to her Chamber, more satisfy’d than she had been for many Months. Quite different did poor Amena pass the Night, for besides the grief of having disoblig’d her Father, banish’d her self his House, and expos’d her Reputation to the unavoidable Censures of the unpitying World; for an ungrateful, or at best an indifferent Lover. She receiv’d a vast addition of Afflictions, when taking out the Letter which D’elmont had given her at parting, possible to weep over it; and accuse her self for so inconsiderately breaking the noble Resolution she had form’d, when it was writ. She found it was Alovisa’s[29] Hand, for the Count by mistake had given her the second he receiv’d from that Lady, instead of that she desir’d him to return. Never was Surprize, Confusion, and Dispair at such a height, as in Amena’s Soul at this Discovery; she was now assur’d by what she read, that she had fled for Protection to the very Person she ought most to have avoided; that she had made a Confident of her greatest Enemy, a Rival dangerous to her Hopes in every Circumstance. She consider’d the High Birth and vast Possessions that Alovisa was Mistress of in opposition to her Father’s scanted Power of making her a Fortune. Her Wit and Subtilty against her Innocence and Simplicity: her Pride, and the respect her grandeur commanded from the World, against her own deplor’d and wretch’d State, and look’d upon her self as wholly lost. The violence of her Sorrow is more easily imagin’d than express’d; but of all her melancholy Reflections, none rack’d her equal to the belief she had that D’elmont was not unsensible by this time whom the Letter came from, and had only made a Court to her to amuse himself a while, and then suffer her to fall a Sacrifice to his Ambition, and feed the Vanity of her Rival; a just Indignation now open’d the Eyes of her Understanding, and considering all the Passages of the Count’s Behaviour, she saw a thousand Things which told her, his Designs on her were far unworthy of the Name of Love. None that were ever touch’d with the 
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