A Father's Blessing and Fears — Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World

On 28 March Villars answers Evelina, not Lady Howard. He has not yet acquired the power to resist urgent entreaty. He does not aim at an authority that would deprive her of liberty. He would rather be guided by a prudence that could save him the pangs of repentance. Her impatience to fly to a place her imagination has painted in such attractive colours does not surprise him. He has only to hope that the liveliness of her fancy will not deceive her. To refuse, he says, would raise that fancy still higher.

To see his Evelina happy is to see himself without a wish. He tells her to go, and he asks that Heaven, which alone can direct, preserve and strengthen her. To that he will daily offer prayers for her felicity. He asks that it guard her, watch over her, defend her from danger, save her from distress, and keep vice as distant from her person as from her heart. For himself he asks one further blessing: to close his aged eyes in the arms of one so dear, so deservedly beloved. He signs Arthur Villars.

The refusal he will not make is the one he believes would feed the very picture he fears. The permission he does make still travels with a prayer against danger, distress, and vice. She is told to go. He is left asking to see her again before he dies.