Lovel.  Don’t think, Colonel, that I am meanly compounding off a debate, that I should as willingly go through with you as to eat or drink, if I have the occasion given me for it:  but thus much I will tell you, that my Lord, that Lady Sarah Sadleir, Lady Betty Lawrance, my two cousins Montague, and myself, have written to her in the most solemn and sincere manner, to offer her such terms as no one but herself would refuse, and this long enough before Colonel Morden’s arrival was dreamt of.

Col.  What reason, Sir, may I ask, does she give, against listening to so powerful a mediation, and to such offers?

Lovel.  It looks like capitulating, or else—­

Col.  It looks not like any such thing to me, Mr. Lovelace, who have as good an opinion of your spirit as man can have.  And what, pray, is the part I act, and my motives for it?  Are they not, in desiring that justice may be done to my Cousin Clarissa Harlowe, that I seek to establish the honour of Mrs. Lovelace, if matters can once be brought to bear?

Lovel.  Were she to honour me with her acceptance of that name, Mr. Morden, I should not want you or any man to assert the honour of Mrs. Lovelace.

Col.  I believe it.  But still she has honoured you with that acceptance, she is nearer to me than to you, Mr. Lovelace.  And I speak this, only to show you that, in the part I take, I mean rather to deserve your thanks than your displeasure, though against yourself, were there occasion.  Nor ought you take it amiss, if you rightly weigh the matter:  For, Sir, whom does a lady want protection against but her injurers?  And who has been her greatest injurer?—­Till, therefore, she becomes entitled to your protection, as your wife, you yourself cannot refuse me some merit in wishing to have justice done my cousin.  But, Sir, you were going to say, that if it were not to look like capitulating, you would hint the reasons my cousin gives against accepting such an honourable mediation?

I then told him of my sincere offers of marriage:  ’I made no difficulty, I said, to own my apprehensions, that my unhappy behaviour to her had greatly affected her:  but that it was the implacableness of her friends that had thrown her into despair, and given her a contempt for life.’  I told him, ’that she had been so good as to send me a letter to divert me from a visit my heart was set upon making her:  a letter on which I built great hopes, because she assured me that in it she was going to her father’s; and that I might see her there, when she was received, if it were not my own fault.

Col.  Is it possible?  And were you, Sir, thus earnest?  And did she send you such a letter?

Lord M. confirmed both; and also, that, in obedience to her desires, and that intimation, I had come down without the satisfaction I had proposed to myself in seeing her.

It is very true, Colonel, said I:  and I should have told you this before:  but your heat made me decline it; for, as I said, it had an appearance of meanly capitulating with you.  An abjectness of heart, of which, had I been capable, I should have despised myself as much as I might have expected you would despise me.