I thought this was considerately and fairly put.  But now, indifferent as my head was, I had a little time to consider the man and his behaviour.  He terrified me with his looks, and with his violent emotions, as he gazed upon me.  Evident joy-suppressed emotions, as I have since recollected.  His sentences short, and pronounced as if his breath were touched.  Never saw I his abominable eyes look as then they looked—­ Triumph in them!—­fierce and wild; and more disagreeable than the women’s at the vile house appeared to me when I first saw them:  and at times, such a leering, mischief-boding cast!—­I would have given the world to have been an hundred miles from him.  Yet his behaviour was decent—­a decency, however, that I might have seen to be struggled for—­for he snatched my hand two or three times, with a vehemence in his grasp that hurt me; speaking words of tenderness through his shut teeth, as it seemed; and let it go with a beggar-voiced humbled accent, like the vile woman’s just before; half-inward; yet his words and manner carrying the appearance of strong and almost convulsed passion!—­O my dear! what mischief was he not then meditating!

I complained once or twice of thirst.  My mouth seemed parched.  At the time, I supposed that it was my terror (gasping often as I did for breath) that parched up the roof of my mouth.  I called for water:  some table-beer was brought me:  beer, I suppose, was a better vehicle for their potions.  I told the maid, that she knew I seldom tasted malt liquor:  yet, suspecting nothing of this nature, being extremely thirsty, I drank it, as what came next:  and instantly, as it were, found myself much worse than before:  as if inebriated, I should fancy:  I know not how.

His servant was gone twice as long as he needed:  and, just before his return, came one of the pretended Lady Betty’s with a letter for Mr. Lovelace.

He sent it up to me.  I read it:  and then it was that I thought myself a lost creature; it being to put off her going to Hampstead that night, on account of violent fits which Miss Montague was pretended to be seized with; for then immediately came into my head his vile attempt upon me in this house; the revenge that my flight might too probably inspire him with on that occasion, and because of the difficulty I made to forgive him, and to be reconciled to him; his very looks wild and dreadful to me; and the women of the house such as I had more reason than ever, even from the pretended Lady Betty’s hint, to be afraid of:  all these crowding together in my apprehensive mind, I fell into a kind of phrensy.

I have no remembrance how I was for this time it lasted:  but I know that, in my first agitations, I pulled off my head-dress, and tore my ruffles in twenty tatters, and ran to find him out.

When a little recovered, I insisted upon the hint he had given me of their coach.  But the messenger, he said, had told him, that it was sent to fetch a physician, lest his chariot should be put up, or not ready.