You would know what I would be at, and how I intend to dispose of myself.  Alas! were I in my own disposal, you should come to my grave to be resolved; but grief alone will not kill.  All that I can say, then, is that I resolve on nothing but to arm myself with patience, to resist nothing that is laid upon me, nor struggle for what I have no hope to get.  I have no ends nor no designs, nor will my heart ever be capable of any; but like a country wasted by a civil war, where two opposing parties have disputed their right so long till they have made it worth neither of their conquests, ’tis ruined and desolated by the long strife within it to that degree as ’twill be useful to none,—­nobody that knows the condition ’tis in will think it worth the gaining, and I shall not trouble anybody with it.  No, really, if I may be permitted to desire anything, it shall be only that I may injure nobody but myself,—­I can bear anything that reflects only upon me; or, if I cannot, I can die; but I would fain die innocent, that I might hope to be happy in the next world, though never in this.  I take it a little ill that you should conjure me by anything, with a belief that ’tis more powerful with me than your kindness.  No, assure yourself what that alone cannot gain will be denied to all the world.  You would see me, you say?  You may do so if you please, though I know not to what end.  You deceive yourself if you think it would prevail upon me to alter my intentions; besides, I can make no contrivances; it must be here, and I must endure the noise it will make, and undergo the censures of a people that choose ever to give the worst interpretation that anything will bear.  Yet if it can be any ease to you to make me more miserable than I am, never spare me; consider yourself only, and not me at all,—­’tis no more than I deserve for not accepting what you offered me whilst ’twas in your power to make it good, as you say it then was.  You were prepared, it seems, but I was surprised, I confess.  ’Twas a kind fault though; and you may pardon it with more reason than I have to forgive it myself.  And let me tell you this, too, as lost and as wretched as I am, I have still some sense of my reputation left in me,—­I find that to my cost,—­I shall attempt to preserve it as clear as I can; and to do that, I must, if you see me thus, make it the last of our interviews.  What can excuse me if I should entertain any person that is known to pretend to me, when I can have no hope of ever marrying him?  And what hope can I have of that when the fortune that can only make it possible to me depends upon a thousand accidents and contingencies, the uncertainty of the place ’tis in, and the government it may fall under, your father’s life or his success, his disposal of himself and of his fortune, besides the time that must necessarily be required to produce all this, and the changes that may probably bring with it, which ’tis impossible for us to foresee?  All this considered, what have I to say for myself