Compose yourself, however, Madam; for your own sake, compose yourself.  Permit me to raise you up; abhorred as I am of your soul!

Nay, if I must not touch you; for she wildly slapt my hands; but with such a sweet passionate air, her bosom heaving and throbbing as she looked up to me, that although I was most sincerely enraged, I could with transport have pressed her to mine.

If I must not touch you, I will not.—­But depend upon it, [and I assumed the sternest air I could assume, to try what it would do,] depend upon it, Madam, that this is not the way to avoid the evils you dread.  Let me do what I will, I cannot be used worse—­Dorcas, begone!

She arose, Dorcas being about to withdraw; and wildly caught hold of her arm:  O Dorcas!  If thou art of mine own sex, leave me not, I charge thee!  —­Then quitting Dorcas, down she threw herself upon her knees, in the furthermost corner of the room, clasping a chair with her face laid upon the bottom of it!—­O where can I be safe?—­Where, where can I be safe, from this man of violence?—­

This gave Dorcas an opportunity to confirm herself in her lady’s confidence:  the wench threw herself at my feet, while I seemed in violent wrath; and embracing my knees, Kill me, Sir, kill me, Sir, if you please!  —­I must throw myself in your way, to save my lady.  I beg your pardon, Sir—­but you must be set on!—­God forgive the mischief-makers!—­But your own heart, if left to itself, would not permit these things—­spare, however, Sir! spare my lady, I beseech you!—­bustling on her knees about me, as if I were intending to approach her lady, had I not been restrained by her.

This, humoured by me, Begone, devil!—­Officious devil, begone!—­startled the dear creature:  who, snatching up hastily her head from the chair, and as hastily popping it down again in terror, hit her nose, I suppose, against the edge of the chair; and it gushed out with blood, running in a stream down her bosom; she herself was too much frighted to heed it!

Never was mortal man in such terror and agitation as I; for I instantly concluded, that she had stabbed herself with some concealed instrument.

I ran to her in a wild agony—­for Dorcas was frighted out of all her mock interposition——­

What have you done!—­O what have you done!—­Look up to me, my dearest life!—­Sweet injured innocence, look up to me!  What have you done!—­Long will I not survive you!—­And I was upon the point of drawing my sword to dispatch myself, when I discovered—­[What an unmanly blockhead does this charming creature make me at her pleasure!] that all I apprehended was but a bloody nose, which, as far as I know (for it could not be stopped in a quarter of an hour) may have saved her head and her intellects.

But I see by this scene, that the sweet creature is but a pretty coward at bottom; and that I can terrify her out of her virulence against me, whenever I put on sternness and anger.  But then, as a qualifier to the advantage this gives me over her, I find myself to be a coward too, which I had not before suspected, since I was capable of being so easily terrified by the apprehensions of her offering violence to herself.