I was going on; when interrupting me, You see, Mr. Lovelace, said she, how you have embarrassed yourself by your obliquities!  You see, that you have not been able to return a direct answer to a plain and honest question, though upon it depends all the happiness, on the prospect of which you congratulate me!

You know, my best love, what my prudent, and I will say, my kind motives were, for giving out that we were married.  You see that I have taken no advantage of it; and that no inconvenience has followed it.  You see that your uncle wants only to be assured from ourselves that it is so—­

Not another word on this subject, Mr. Lovelace.  I will not only risk, but I will forfeit, the reconciliation so near my heart, rather than I will go on to countenance a story so untrue!

My dearest soul—­Would you have me appear—­

I would have you appear, Sir, as you are!  I am resolved that I will appear to my uncle’s friend, and to my uncle, as I am.

For one week, my dearest life! cannot you for one week—­only till the settlements—­

Not for one hour, with my own consent.  You don’t know, Sir, how much I have been afflicted, that I have appeared to the people below what I am not.  But my uncle, Sir, shall never have it to upbraid me, nor will I to upbraid myself, that I have wilfully passed upon him in false lights.

What, my dear, would you have me say to the Captain to-morrow morning?  I have given him room to think—­

Then put him right, Mr. Lovelace.  Tell the truth.  Tell him what you please of the favour of your relations to me:  tell him what you will about the settlements:  and if, when drawn, you will submit them to his perusal and approbation, it will show him how much you are in earnest.

My dearest life!—­Do you think that he would disapprove of the terms I have offered?

No.

Then may I be accursed, if I willingly submit to be trampled under foot by my enemies!

And may I, Mr. Lovelace, never be unhappy in this life, if I submit to the passing upon my uncle Harlowe a wilful and premeditated falshood for truth!  I have too long laboured under the affliction which the rejection of all my friends has given me, to purchase my reconciliation with them now at so dear a price as this of my veracity.

The women below, my dear—­

What are the women below to me?—­I want not to establish myself with them.  Need they know all that passes between my relations and you and me?

Neither are they any thing to me, Madam.  Only, that when, for the sake of preventing the fatal mischiefs which might have attended your brother’s projects, I have made them think us married, I would not appear to them in a light which you yourself think so shocking.  By my soul, Madam, I had rather die, than contradict myself so flagrantly, after I have related to them so many circumstances of our marriage.