Celina to Deterville.

I do indeed pity a distracted heart, which finds no relief either from itself or from any thing about it. Such is your situation, my dear Deterville; you love, with a passion which knows no bounds, the most amiable and most lovely girl that ever was; the purity of her soul, the natural delicacy of her conversation, her beauty, for ever new to your eyes, her candour, even her very tenderness for Aza, repugnant as it is to all your hopes, join to contribute to nourish in you a passion, which is continually increased by esteem. A passion the more tender, as it is the first you ever felt.

I would endeavour to cure you of it, if it were of such a nature as made it at all likely I should succeed; but I am not ignorant, that at the time you was master of this fair Indian, that she was yours by the laws of conquest, you respected her beauty, her sentiments, and her misfortunes. It was not for want of your strong endeavours, that what she prized as her only good, was not hers; and that even at the expence of the wealth which might have been your own.

I looked up to you as a prodigy, when I saw you send for the happy Aza from the Spanish court, in order to return to him, in company with his other treasures, the only jewel which you wished to keep. Surely this was the heroism of generosity. Afterwards, by an unexpected turn of fortune, when the infidelity of Aza rendered your favours useless, and you had more reason than ever to hope, the unexampled constancy of Zilia for an ungrateful man added the last severe stroke to your misfortunes.

But, my dear brother, while I indulge your grief, and lament your ill-starr'd passion, give me leave to say, that you suppose your case worse than it really is. Your anxious heart permits not the least glimpse of hope; but perhaps the indifference in which you formerly lived, makes you ignorant of the hopes which I think are still left you. As a woman, I ought to be true to my sex; but as a sister, I must a little betray it.