Your peace is destroyed!—­I wonder not at it:  since now you must reproach yourself for a credulity so ill-placed.

Your intellect is touched!—­I am sure my heart bleeds for you!  But, excuse me, my dear, I doubt your intellect was touched before you left Hampstead:  or you would never have let him find you out there; or, when he did, suffer him to prevail upon you to return to the horrid brothel.

I tell you, I sent you three letters:  The first of which, dated the 7th and 8th of June* (for it was written at twice) came safely to your hands, as you sent me word by a few lines dated the 9th:  had it not, I should have doubted my own safety; since in it I give you such an account of the abominable house, and threw such cautions in your way, in relation to that Tomlinson, as the more surprised me that you could think of going back to it again, after you had escaped from it, and from Lovelace.—­O my dear—­but nothing now will I ever wonder at!

* See Vol.  V. Letter XX.

The second, dated June 10,* was given into your own hand at Hampstead, on Sunday the 11th, as you was lying upon a couch, in a strange way, according to my messenger’s account of you, bloated, and flush-coloured; I don’t know how.

* See Letter VII. of this volume.

The third was dated the 20th of June.* Having not heard one word from you since the promising billet of the 9th, I own I did not spare you in it.  I ventured it by the usual conveyance, by that Wilson’s, having no other:  so cannot be sure you received it.  Indeed I rather think you might not; because in your’s, which fell into my mother’s hands, you make no mention of it:  and if you had had it, I believe it would have touched you too much to have been passed by unnoticed.

* See Letter XXX. of this volume.

You have heard, that I have been ill, you say.  I had a cold, indeed; but it was so slight a one that it confined me not an hour.  But I doubt not that strange things you have heard, and been told, to induce you to take the step you took.  And, till you did take that step (the going back with this villain, I mean,) I knew not a more pitiable case than your’s:  since every body must have excused you before, who knew how you were used at home, and was acquainted with your prudence and vigilance.  But, alas! my dear, we see that the wisest people are not to be depended upon, when love, like an ignis fatuus, holds up its misleading lights before their eyes.

My mother tells me, she sent you an answer, desiring you not to write to me, because it would grieve me.  To be sure I am grieved; exceedingly grieved; and, disappointed too, you must permit me to say.  For I had always thought that there never was such a woman, at your years, in the world.

But I remember once an argument you held, on occasion of a censure passed in company upon an excellent preacher, who was not a very excellent liver:  preaching and practising, you said, required very different talents:* which, when united in the same person, made the man a saint; as wit and judgment, going together, constituted a genius.