I will take order that my letters shall be left with Jones, and yours called for there.  As long as your last was, I read it over thrice in less than an hour, though, to say truth, I had skipped some on’t the last time.  I could not read my own confession so often.  Love is a terrible word, and I should blush to death if anything but a letter accused me on’t.  Pray be merciful, and let it run friendship in my next charge.  My Lady sends me word she has received those parts of Cyrus I lent you.  Here is another for you which, when you have read, you know how to dispose.  There are four pretty stories in it, “L’Amant Absente,” “L’Amant non Aime,” “L’Amant Jaloux,” et “L’Amant dont La Maitresse est mort.”  Tell me which you have most compassion for when you have read what every one says for himself.  Perhaps you will not think it so easy to decide which is the most unhappy, as you may think by the titles their stories bear.  Only let me desire you not to pity the jealous one, for I remember I could do nothing but laugh at him as one that sought his own vexation.  This, and the little journeys (you say) you are to make, will entertain you till I come; which, sure, will be as soon as possible I can, since ’tis equally desired by you and your faithful.

Letter 32.—­Things being more settled in that part of the world, Sir John Temple is returning to Ireland, where he intends taking his seat as Master of the Rolls once again.  Temple joins his father soon after this, and stays in Ireland a few months.

Lady Ormond was the wife of the first Duke of Ormond.  She had obtained her pass to go over to Ireland on August 24th, 1653.  The Ormonds had indeed been in great straits for want of money, and in August 1652 Lady Ormond had come over from Caen, where they were then living, to endeavour to claim Cromwell’s promise of reserving to her that portion of their estate which had been her inheritance.  After great delays she obtained L500, and a grant of L2000 per annum out of their Irish lands “lying most conveniently to Dunmore House.”  It must have been this matter that Dorothy had heard of when she questions “whether she will get it when she comes there.”

Francis Annesley, Lord Valentia, belonged to an ancient Nottinghamshire family, though he himself was born in Newport, Buckinghamshire.  Of his daughter’s marriage I can find nothing.  Lord Valentia was at this time Secretary of State at Dublin.

Sir Justinian has at length found a second wife.  Her name is Vere, and she is the daughter of Lord Leigh of Stoneleigh.  Thus do Dorothy’s suitors, one by one, recover and cease to lament her obduracy.  When she declares that she would rather have chosen a chain to lead her apes in than marry Sir Justinian, she refers to an old superstition as to the ultimate fate of spinsters—­

          Women, dying maids, lead apes in hell,

runs the verse of an old play, and that is the whole superstition, the origin of which seems somewhat inexplicable.  The phrase is thrice used by Shakespeare, and constantly occurs in the old burlesques and comedies; in one instance, in a comedy entitled “Love’s Convert” (1651), it is altered to “lead an ape in heaven.”  Many will remember the fate of “The young Mary Anne” in the famous Ingoldsby legend, “Bloudie Jacke:”—­