I think once more we seem to be in a kind of train; but through a storm.  I will give you the particulars.

I heard him in the dining-room at five in the morning.  I had rested very ill, and was up too.  But opened not my door till six:  when Dorcas brought me his request for my company.

He approached me, and taking my hand, as I entered the dining-room, I went not to bed, Madam, till two, said he; yet slept not a wink.  For God’s sake, torment me not, as you have done for a week past.

He paused.  I was silent.

At first, proceeded he, I thought your resentment of a curiosity, in which I had been disappointed, could not be deep; and that it would go off of itself:  But, when I found it was to be kept up till you knew the success of some new overtures which you had made, and which, complied with, might have deprived me of you for ever, how, Madam, could I support myself under the thoughts of having, with such an union of interests, made so little impression upon your mind in my favour?

He paused again.  I was still silent.  He went on.

I acknowledge that I have a proud heart, Madam.  I cannot but hope for some instances of previous and preferable favour from the lady I am ambitious to call mine; and that her choice of me should not appear, not flagrantly appear, directed by the perverseness of her selfish persecutors, who are my irreconcilable enemies.

More to the same purpose he said.  You know, my dear, the room he had given me to recriminate upon him in twenty instances.  I did not spare him.

Every one of these instances, said I, (after I had enumerated them) convinces me of your pride indeed, Sir, but not of your merit.  I confess, that I have as much pride as you can have, although I hope it is of another kind than that you so readily avow.  But if, Sir, you have the least mixture in yours of that pride which may be expected, and thought laudable, in a man of your birth, alliances, and fortune, you should rather wish, I will presume to say, to promote what you call my pride, than either to suppress it, or to regret that I have it.  It is this my acknowledged pride, proceeded I, that induces me to tell you, Sir, that I think it beneath me to disown what have been my motives for declining, for some days past, any conversation with you, or visit from Mr. Mennell, that might lead to points out of my power to determine upon, until I heard from my uncle Harlowe; whom, I confess, I have caused to be sounded, whether I might be favoured with his interest to obtain for me a reconciliation with my friends, upon terms which I had caused to be proposed.

I know not, said he, and suppose must not presume to ask, what those terms were.  But I can but too well guess at them; and that I was to have been the preliminary sacrifice.  But you must allow me, Madam, to say, That as much as I admire the nobleness of your sentiments in general, and in particular that laudable pride which you have spoken of, I wish that I could compliment you with such an uniformity in it, as had set you as much above all submission to minds implacable and unreasonable, (I hope I may, without offence, say, that your brother’s and sister’s are such,) as it has above all favour and condescension to me.