When the hearse moved off, and was out of sight, I locked up the lady’s chamber, into which all that had belonged to her was removed.

I expect to hear from the Colonel as soon as he is got down, by a servant of his own.

LETTER XXII

Mr. Mowbray, to John Belford, Esq. 
Uxbridge, Sunday Morn.  Nine o’clock.

DEAR JACK,

I send you enclosed a letter from Mr. Lovelace; which, though written in the cursed Algebra, I know to be such a one as will show what a queer way he is in; for he read it to us with the air of a tragedian.  You will see by it what the mad fellow had intended to do, if we had not all of us interposed.  He was actually setting out with a surgeon of this place, to have the lady opened and embalmed.—­Rot me if it be not my full persuasion that, if he had, her heart would have been found to be either iron or marble.

We have got Lord M. to him.  His Lordship is also much afflicted at the lady’s death.  His sisters and nieces, he says, will be ready to break their hearts.  What a rout’s here about a woman!  For after all she was no more.

We have taken a pailful of black bull’s blood from him; and this has lowered him a little.  But he threatens Col.  Morden, he threatens you for your cursed reflections, [cursed reflections indeed, Jack!] and curses all the world and himself still.

Last night his mourning (which is full as deep as for a wife) was brought home, and his fellows’ mourning too.  And, though eight o’clock, he would put it on, and make them attend him in theirs.

Every body blames him on this lady’s account.  But I see not for why.  She was a vixen in her virtue.  What a pretty fellow she has ruined—­Hey, Jack!—­and her relations are ten times more to blame than he.  I will prove this to the teeth of them all.  If they could use her ill, why should they expect him to use her well?—­You, or I, or Tourville, in his shoes, would have done as he has done.  Are not all the girls forewarned?  —­’Has he done by her as that caitiff Miles did to the farmer’s daughter, whom he tricked up to town, (a pretty girl also, just such another as Bob.’s Rosebud,) under a notion of waiting on a lady?—­Drilled her on, pretending the lady was abroad.  Drank her light-hearted—­then carried her to a play—­then it was too late, you know, to see the pretended lady —­then to a bagnio—­ruined her, as they call it, and all this the same day.  Kept her on (an ugly dog, too!) a fortnight or three weeks, then left her to the mercy of the people of the bagnio, (never paying for any thing,) who stript her of all her clothes, and because she would not take on, threw her into prison; where she died in want and despair!’—­A true story, thou knowest, Jack.—­This fellow deserved to be d——­d.  But has our Bob. been such a villain as this?—­And would he not have married this flinty-hearted lady?—­So he is justified very evidently.