Our mother and her nymphs say, I am a perfect Craven, and no Lovelace:  and so I think.  But this is no simpering, smiling charmer, as I have found others to be, when I have touched upon affecting subjects at a distance; as once or twice I have tried to her, the mother introducing them (to make sex palliate the freedom to sex) when only we three together.  She is above the affectation of not seeming to understand you.  She shows by her displeasure, and a fierceness not natural to her eye, that she judges of an impure heart by an impure mouth, and darts dead at once even the embryo hopes of an encroaching lover, however distantly insinuated, before the meaning hint can dawn into double entendre.

By my faith, Jack, as I sit gazing upon her, my whole soul in my eyes, contemplating her perfections, and thinking, when I have seen her easy and serene, what would be her thoughts, did she know my heart as well as I know it; when I behold her disturbed and jealous, and think of the justness of her apprehensions, and that she cannot fear so much as there is room for her to fear; my heart often misgives me.

And must, think I, O creature so divinely excellent, and so beloved of my soul, those arms, those encircling arms, that would make a monarch happy, be used to repel brutal force; all their strength, unavailingly perhaps, exerted to repel it, and to defend a person so delicately framed?  Can violence enter into the heart of a wretch, who might entitle himself to all her willing yet virtuous love, and make the blessings he aspireth after, her duty to confer?—­Begone, villain-purposes!  Sink ye all to the hell that could only inspire ye!  And I am then ready to throw myself at her feet, to confess my villainous designs, to avow my repentance, and put it out of my power to act unworthily by such an excellence.

How then comes it, that all these compassionate, and, as some would call them, honest sensibilities go off!—­Why, Miss Howe will tell thee:  she says, I am the devil.—­By my conscience, I think he has at present a great share in me.

There’s ingenuousness!—­How I lay myself open to thee!—­But seest thou not, that the more I say against myself, the less room there is for thee to take me to task?—­O Belford, Belford!  I cannot, cannot (at least at present) I cannot marry.

Then her family, my bitter enemies—­to supple to them, or if I do not, to make her as unhappy as she can be from my attempts——­

Then does she not love them too much, me too little?

She now seems to despise me:  Miss Howe declares, that she really does despise me.  To be despised by a wife—­What a thought is that!—­To be excelled by a wife too, in every part of praise-worthy knowledge!—­To take lessons, to take instructions, from a wife!—­More than despise me, she herself has taken time to consider whether she does not hate me:—­ I hate you, Lovelace, with my whole heart, said she to me but yesterday!  My soul is above thee, man!—­Urge me not to tell thee how sincerely I think my soul above thee!—­How poor indeed was I then, even in my own heart!—­So visible a superiority, to so proud a spirit as mine!—­And here from below, from below indeed! from these women!  I am so goaded on——­