Lord, my dear, what pity it is, that you took much pains to get from the man!—­But you know best!—­Sometimes I think it could not be you to whom the rustic delivered my letter.  But it must too:  yet, it is strange I could not have one line by him:—­not one:—­and you so soon well enough to go with the wretch back again!

I am not sure that the letter I am now writing will come to your hands:  so shall not say half that I have upon my mind to say.  But, if you think it worth your while to write to me, pray let me know what fine ladies his relations those were who visited you at Hampstead, and carried you back again so joyfully to a place that I had so fully warned you.—­ But I will say no more:  at least till I know more:  for I can do nothing but wonder and stand amazed.

Notwithstanding all the man’s baseness, ’tis plain there was more than a lurking love—­Good Heaven!—­But I have done!—­Yet I know not how to have done neither!—­Yet I must—­I will.

Only account to me, my dear, for what I cannot at all account for:  and inform me, whether you are really married, or not.—­And then I shall know whether there must or must not, be a period shorter than that of one of our lives, to a friendship which has hitherto been the pride and boast of

Your
Anna Howe.

***

Dorcas tells me, that she has just now had a searching conversation, as she calls it, with her lady.  She is willing, she tells the wench, still to place her confidence in her.  Dorcas hopes she has re-assured her:  but wishes me not to depend upon it.  Yet Captain Tomlinson’s letter must assuredly weigh with her.

I sent it in just now by Dorcas, desiring her to re-peruse it.  And it was not returned me, as I feared it would be.  And that’s a good sign, I think.

I say I think, and I think; for this charming creature, entangled as I am in my own inventions, puzzles me ten thousand times more than I her.

LETTER XXXI

Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, ESQ. 
Thursday noon, June 22.

Let me perish if I know what to make either of myself or of this surprising creature—­now calm, now tempestuous.—­But I know thou lovest not anticipation any more than I.

At my repeated requests, she met me at six this morning.

She was ready dressed; for she had not her clothes off every since she declared, that they never more should be off in this house.  And charmingly she looked, with all the disadvantages of a three-hours violent stomach-ache—­(for Dorcas told me that she had been really ill)—­ no rest, and eyes red and swelled with weeping.  Strange to me that those charming fountains have not been so long ago exhausted!  But she is a woman.  And I believe anatomists allow, that women have more watry heads than men.

Well, my dearest creature, I hope you have now thoroughly considered of the contents of Captain Tomlinson’s letter.  But as we are thus early met, let me beseech you to make this my happy day.