I believe I shall have no patience with you when I see you.  Your d——­d stings and reflections have almost turned my brain.

But here Lord M. they tell me, is come!—­D——­n him, and those who sent for him!

I know not what I have written.  But her dear heart and a lock of her hair I will have, let who will be the gainsayers!  For is she not mine?  Whose else can she be?  She has no father nor mother, no sister, no brother, no relations but me.  And my beloved is mine, and I am her’s—­ and that’s enough.—­But Oh!—­

      She’s out.  The damp of death has quench’d her quite! 
      Those spicy doors, her lips, are shut, close lock’d,
      Which never gale of life shall open more!

And is it so?—­Is it indeed so?—­Good God!—­Good God!—­But they will not let me write on.  I must go down to this officious Peer—­Who the devil sent for him?

LETTER XXIV

Mr. Belford, to Richard Mowbray, Esq. 
Sunday, Sept. 10.  Four in the afternoon.

I have your’s, with our unhappy friend’s enclosed.  I am glad my Lord is with him.  As I presume that his phrensy will be but of short continuance, I most earnestly wish, that on his recovery he could be prevailed upon to go abroad.  Mr. Morden, who is inconsolable, has seen by the will, (as indeed he suspected before he read it,) that the case was more than a common seduction; and has dropt hints already, that he looks on himself, on that account, as freed from his promises made to the dying lady, which were, that he would not seek to avenge her death.

You must make the recovery of his health the motive for urging him on this head; for, if you hint at his own safety, he will not stir, but rather seek the Colonel.

As to the lock of hair, you may easily pacify him, (as you once saw the angel,) with hair near the colour, if he be intent upon it.

At my Lord’s desire I will write on, and in my common hand; that you may judge what is, and what is not, fit to be read to Mr. Lovelace at present.  But as I shall not forbear reflections as I go along, in hopes to reach his heart on his recovery, I think it best to direct myself to him still, and that as if he were not disordered.

As I shall not have leisure to take copies, and yet am willing to have the whole subject before me, for my own future contemplation, I must insist upon a return of my letters some time hence.  Mr. Lovelace knows that this is one of my conditions; and has hitherto complied with it.

Thy letter, Mowbray, is an inimitable performance.  Thou art a strange impenetrable creature.  But let me most earnestly conjure thee, and the idle flutterer, Tourville, from what you have seen of poor Belton’s exit; from our friend Lovelace’s phrensy, and the occasion of it; and from the terrible condition in which the wretched Sinclair lies; to set about an immediate change of life and manners.  For my own part, I am determined, be your resolutions what they may, to take the advice I give.