Who knows but I may have half a dozen creatures to get off my hands, before I engage for life?—­Yet, lest this should mean me a compliment, as if I would reform, she adds her belief, that she ’must not expect me to be honest on this side my grand climacteric.’  She has an high opinion of her sex, to think they can charm so long a man so well acquainted with their identicalness.

‘He to suggest delays,’ she says, ’from a compliment to be made to Lord M.!’—­Yes, I, my dear.—­Because a man has not been accustomed to be dutiful, must he never be dutiful?—­In so important a case as this too! the hearts of his whole family are engaged in it!—­’You did, indeed,’ says she, ’want an interposing friend—­but were I to have been in your situation, I would have torn his eyes out, and left it to his heart to furnish the reason for it.’  See!  See!  What sayest thou to this, Jack?

‘Villain—­fellow that he is!’ follow.  And for what?  Only for wishing that the next day were to be my happy one; and for being dutiful to my nearest relation.

‘It is the cruelest of fates,’ she says, ’for a woman to be forced to have a man whom her heart despises.’—­That is what I wanted to be sure of.—­I was afraid, that my beloved was too conscious of her talents; of her superiority!  I was afraid that she indeed despises me.—­And I cannot bear to think that she does.  But, Belford, I do not intend that this lady shall be bound down to so cruel a fate.  Let me perish if I marry a woman who has given her most intimate friend reason to say, she despises me!—­A Lovelace to be despised, Jack!

’His clenched fist to his forehead on your leaving him in just displeasure’—­that is, when she was not satisfied with my ardours, if it please ye!—­I remember the motion:  but her back was towards me at the time.* Are these watchful ladies all eye?—­But observe what follows; ’I wish it had been a poll-axe, and in the hands of his worst enemy.’—­

* She tells Miss Howe, that she saw this motion in the pier-glass.  See Letter XXXIII. of this volume.

I will have patience, Jack; I will have patience!  My day is at hand.—­ Then will I steel my heart with these remembrances.

But here is a scheme to be thought of, in order to ’get my fair prize out of my hands, in case I give her reason to suspect me.’

This indeed alarms me.  Now the contention becomes arduous.  Now wilt thou not wonder, if I let loose my plotting genius upon them both.  I will not be out-Norris’d, Belford.

But once more, ‘She has no notion,’ she says, ’that I can or dare to mean her dishonour.  But then the man is a fool—­that’s all.’—­I should indeed be a fool, to proceed as I do, and mean matrimony!—­’However, since you are thrown upon a fool,’ says she, ’marry the fool at the first opportunity; and though I doubt that this man will be the most unmanageable of fools, as all witty and vain fools are, take him as a punishment, since you cannot as a reward.’—­Is there any bearing this, Belford?