Upon my soul, Jack, such is the veneration I have for this admirable woman, that I am shocked barely at putting the case—­and so wilt thou, if thou respectest her as thou oughtest:  for thou knowest that men and women, all the world over, form their opinions of one another by each person’s professions and known practices.  In this lady, therefore, it would be unpardonable to tell a wilful untruth, as it would be strange if I kept my word.—­In love cases, I mean; for, as to the rest, I am an honest, moral man, as all who know me can testify.

And what, after all, would this lady deserve, if she has deceived me in this case?  For did she not set me prancing away, upon Lord M.’s best nag, to Lady Sarah’s, and to Lady Betty’s, with an erect and triumphing countenance, to show them her letter to me?

And let me tell thee, that I have received their congratulations upon it:  Well, and now, cousin Lovelace, cries one:  Well, and now, cousin Lovelace, cries t’other; I hope you will make the best of husbands to so excellent and so forgiving a lady!—­And now we shall soon have the pleasure of looking upon you as a reformed man, added one!  And now we shall see you in the way we have so long wished you to be in, cried the other!

My cousins Montague also have been ever since rejoicing in the new relationship.  Their charming cousin, and their lovely cousin, at every word!  And how dearly they will love he!  What lessons they will take from her!  And yet Charlotte, who pretends to have the eye of an eagle, was for finding out some mystery in the style and manner, till I overbore her, and laughed her out of it.

As for Lord M. he has been in hourly expectation of being sent to with proposals of one sort or other from the Harlowes; and still we have it, that such proposals will be made by Colonel Morden when he comes; and that the Harlowes only put on a fae of irreconcileableness, till they know the issue of Morden’s visit, in order to make the better terms with us.

Indeed, if I had not undoubted reason, as I said, to believe the continuance of their antipathy to me, and implacableness to her, I should be apt to think there might be some foundation for my Lord’s conjecture; for there is a cursed deal of low cunning in all that family, except in the angel of it; who has so much generosity of soul, that she despises cunning, both name and thing.

What I mean by all this is, to let thee see what a stupid figure I shall make to all my own family, if my Clarissa has been capable, as Gulliver in his abominable Yahoo story phrases it, if it were only that I should be outwitted by such a novice at plotting, and that it would make me look silly to my kinswomen here, who know I value myself upon my contrivances, it would vex me to the heart; and I would instantly clap a featherbed into a coach and six, and fetch her away, sick or well, and marry her at my leisure.

But Col.  Morden is come, and I must break off.