How difficult is it, says he, to make a woman subscribe to a preference against herself, though ever so visible; especially where love is concerned!  This violent, this partial little devil, Sally, has the insolence to compare herself with my angel—­yet owns her to be an angel.  I charge you, Mr. Lovelace, say she, show none of your extravagant acts of kindness before me to this sullen, this gloomy beauty—­I cannot bear it.  Then was I reminded of her first sacrifice.

What a rout do these women make about nothing at all!  Were it not for what the learned Bishop, in his Letter from Italy, calls the entanglements of amour, and I the delicacies of intrigue, what is there, Belford, in all they can do for us?

How do these creatures endeavour to stimulate me!  A fallen woman is a worse devil than ever a profligate man.  The former is incapable of remorse:  that am not I—­nor ever shall they prevail upon me, though aided by all the powers of darkness, to treat this admirable creature with indignity—­so far, I mean, as indignity can be separated from the trials which will prove her to be either woman or angel.

Yet with them I am a craven.  I might have had her before now, if I would.  If I would treat her as flesh and blood, I should find her such.  They thought I knew, if any man living did, that if a man made a goddess of a woman, she would assume the goddess; that if power were given to her, she would exert that power to the giver, if to nobody else.  And D——­r’s wife is thrown into my dish, who, thou knowest, kept her ceremonious husband at haughty distance, and whined in private to her insulting footman.  O how I cursed the blasphemous wretches!  They will make me, as I tell them, hate their house, and remove from it.  And by my soul, Jack, I am ready at times to think that I should not have brought her hither, were it but on Sally’s account.  And yet, without knowing either Sally’s heart, or Polly’s, the dear creature resolves against having any conversation with them but such as she can avoid.  I am not sorry for this, thou mayest think; since jealousy in a woman is not to be concealed from woman.  And Sally has no command of herself.

What dost think!—­Here this little devil Sally, not being able, as she told me, to support life under my displeasure, was going into a fit:  but when I saw her preparing for it, I went out of the room; and so she thought it would not be worth her while to show away.

[In this manner he mentions what his meaning was in making the Lady the
   compliment of his absence:]

As to leaving her:  if I go but for one night, I have fulfilled my promise:  and if she think not, I can mutter and grumble, and yield again, and make a merit of it; and then, unable to live out of her presence, soon return.  Nor are women ever angry at bottom for being disobeyed through excess of love.  They like an uncontroulable passion.  They like to have every favour ravished from them,