She paused.  I was silent.  By my soul, thought I, this sweet creature will at last undo me!

She proceeded:  What now remains, but that you pronounce me free of all obligation to you? and that you hinder me not from pursuing the destiny that shall be allotted me?

Again she paused.  I was still silent; meditating whether to renounce all further designs upon her; whether I had not received sufficient evidence of a virtue, and of a greatness of soul, that could not be questioned or impeached.

She went on:  Propitious to me be your silence, Mr. Lovelace!—­Tell me, that I am free of all obligation to you.  You know, I never made you promises.  You know, that you are not under any to me.—­My broken fortunes I matter not—­

She was proceeding—­My dearest life, said I, I have been all this time, though you fill me with doubts of your favour, busy in the nuptial preparations.  I am actually in treaty for equipage.

Equipage, Sir!—­Trappings, tinsel!—­What is equipage; what is life; what is any thing; to a creature sunk so low as I am in my own opinion!—­ Labouring under a father’s curse!—­Unable to look backward without self-reproach, or forward without terror!—­These reflections strengthened by every cross accident!—­And what but cross accidents befal me!—­All my darling schemes dashed in pieces, all my hopes at an end; deny me not the liberty to refuge myself in some obscure corner, where neither the enemies you have made me, nor the few friends you have left me, may ever hear of the supposed rash-one, till those happy moments are at hand, which shall expiate for all!

I had not a word to say for myself.  Such a war in my mind had I never known.  Gratitude, and admiration of the excellent creature before me, combating with villanous habit, with resolutions so premeditatedly made, and with view so much gloried in!—­An hundred new contrivances in my head, and in my heart, that to be honest, as it is called, must all be given up, by a heart delighting in intrigue and difficulty—­Miss Howe’s virulences endeavoured to be recollected—­yet recollection refusing to bring them forward with the requisite efficacy—­I had certainly been a lost man, had not Dorcas come seasonably in with a letter.—­On the superscription written—­Be pleased, Sir, to open it now.

I retired to the window—­opened it—­it was from Dorcas herself.—­These the contents—­’Be pleased to detain my lady:  a paper of importance to transcribe.  I will cough when I have done.’

I put the paper in my pocket, and turned to my charmer, less disconcerted, as she, by that time, had also a little recovered herself.  —­One favour, dearest creature—­Let me but know, whether Miss Howe approves or disapproves of my proposals?  I know her to be my enemy.  I was intending to account to you for the change of behaviour you accused me of at the beginning of the conversation; but was diverted from it by your vehemence.  Indeed,