The description of her person I shall take a little more pains about.  My mind must be more at ease, before I undertake that.  And I shall threaten, ’that if, after a certain period given for her voluntary return, she be not heard of, I will prosecute any person who presumes to entertain, harbour, abet, or encourage her, with all the vengeance that an injured gentleman and husband may be warranted to take by law, or otherwise.’

***

Fresh cause of aggravation!—­But for this scribbling vein, or I should still run mad.

Again going into her chamber, because it was her’s, and sighing over the bed, and every piece of furniture in it, I cast my eye towards the drawers of the dressing-glass, and saw peep out, as it were, in one of the half-drawn drawers, the corner of a letter.  I snatched it out, and found it superscribed, by her, To Mr. Lovelace.  The sight of it made my heart leap, and I trembled so, that I could hardly open the seal.

How does this damn’d love unman me!—­but nobody ever loved as I love!—­It is even increased by her unworthy flight, and my disappointment.  Ungrateful creature, to fly from a passion thus ardently flaming! which, like the palm, rises the more for being depressed and slighted.

I will not give thee a copy of this letter.  I owe her not so much service.

But wouldst thou think, that this haughty promise-breaker could resolve as she does, absolutely and for ever to renounce me for what passed last night?  That she could resolve to forego all her opening prospects of reconciliation; the reconciliation with a worthless family, on which she has set her whole heart?—­Yet she does—­she acquits me of all obligation to her, and herself of all expectations from me—­And for what?—­O that indeed I had given her real cause!  Damn’d confounded niceness, prudery, affectation, or pretty ignorance, if not affectation!—­By my soul, Belford, I told thee all—­I was more indebted to her struggles, than to my own forwardness.  I cannot support my own reflections upon a decency so ill-requited.—­She could not, she would not have been so much a Harlowe in her resentment.  All she feared had then been over; and her own good sense, and even modesty, would have taught her to make the best of it.

But if ever again I get her into my hands, art, and more art, and compulsion too, if she make it necessary, [and ’tis plain that nothing else will do,] shall she experience from the man whose fear of her has been above even his passion for her; and whose gentleness and forbearance she has thus perfidiously triumphed over.  Well, says the Poet,

      ’Tis nobler like a lion to invade
      When appetite directs, and seize my prey,
      Than to wait tamely, like a begging dog,
      Till dull consent throws out the scraps of love.

Thou knowest what I have so lately vowed—­and yet, at times [cruel creature, and ungrateful as cruel!] I can subscribe with too much truth to those lines of another Poet: