I could not remove.  Every body’s eyes were glanced from him to me.  I sat down and fanned myself, and was forced to order a glass of water.  Oh! that I had the eye the basilisk is reported to have, thought I, and that his life were within the power of it!—­directly would I kill him.

He entered with an air so hateful to me, but so agreeable to every other eye, that I could have looked him dead for that too.

After the general salutations he singled out Mr. Hickman, and told him he had recollected some parts of his behaviour to him, when he saw him last, which had made him think himself under obligation to his patience and politeness.

And so, indeed, he was.

Miss D’Oily, upon his complimenting her, among a knot of ladies, asked him, in their hearing, how Miss Clarissa Harlowe did?

He heard, he said, you were not so well as he wished you to be, and as you deserved to be.

O Mr. Lovelace, said she, what have you to answer for on that young lady’s account, if all be true that I have heard.

I have a great deal to answer for, said the unblushing villain:  but that dear lady has so many excellencies, and so much delicacy, that little sins are great ones in her eye.

Little sins! replied Miss D’Oily:  Mr. Lovelace’s character is so well known, that nobody believes he can commit little sins.

You are very good to me, Miss D’Oily.

Indeed I am not.

Then I am the only person to whom you are not very good:  and so I am the less obliged to you.

He turned, with an unconcerned air, to Miss Playford, and made her some genteel compliments.  I believe you know her not.  She visits his cousins Montague.  Indeed he had something in his specious manner to say to every body:  and this too soon quieted the disgust each person had at his entrance.

I still kept my seat, and he either saw me not, or would not yet see me; and addressing himself to my mother, taking her unwilling hand, with an air of high assurance, I am glad to see you here, Madam, I hope Miss Howe is well.  I have reason to complain greatly of her:  but hope to owe to her the highest obligation that can be laid on man.

My daughter, Sir, is accustomed to be too warm and too zealous in her friendships for either my tranquility or her own.

There had indeed been some late occasion given for mutual displeasure between my mother and me:  but I think she might have spared this to him; though nobody heard it, I believe, but the person to whom it was spoken, and the lady who told it me; for my mother spoke it low.

We are not wholly, Madam, to live for ourselves, said the vile hypocrite:  it is not every one who had a soul capable of friendship:  and what a heart must that be, which can be insensible to the interests of a suffering friend?

This sentiment from Mr. Lovelace’s mouth! said my mother—­forgive me, Sir; but you can have no end, surely, in endeavouring to make me think as well of you as some innocent creatures have thought of you to their cost.