“I want nothing to convince me, Sir, that the Countess loves you:  you know the rest of my information:  judge for me, what I can, what I ought to believe!—­You know the rumours of the world concerning you:  Even I, who stay so much at home, and have not taken the least pains to find out my wretchedness, nor to confirm it, since I knew it, have come to the hearing of it; and if you know the licence taken with both your characters, and yet correspond so openly, must it not look to me that you value not your honour in the world’s eye, nor my lady hers?  I told you, Sir, the answer she made to her uncle.”

“You told me, my dear, as you were told.  Be tender of a lady’s reputation—­for your own sake.  No one is exempted from calumny; and even words said, and the occasion of saying them not known, may bear a very different construction from ’what they would have done, had the occasion been told.”

“This may be all true.  Sir:  I wish the lady would be as tender of her reputation as I would be, let her injure me in your affections as she will.  But can you say, Sir, that there is nothing between you, that should not be, according to my notions of virtue and honour, and according to your own, which I took pride in, before that fatal masquerade?

“You answer me not,” continued I; “and may I not fairly presume you cannot as I wish to be answered?  But come, dearest Sir,” (and I put my arms around his neck) “let me not urge you too boldly.  I will never forget your benefits, and your past kindnesses to me.  I have been a happy creature:  no one, till within these few weeks, was ever so happy as I. I will love you still with a passion as ardent as ever I loved you.  Absence cannot lessen such a love as mine:  I am sure it cannot.

“I see your difficulties.  You have gone too far to recede.  If you can make it easy to your conscience, I will wait with patience my happier destiny; and I will wish to live (if I can be convinced you wish me not to die) in order to pray for you, and to be a directress to the first education of my dearest baby.

“You sigh, dear Sir; repose your beloved face next to my fond heart.  ’Tis all your own:  and ever shall be, let it, or let it not, be worthy of the honour in your estimation.

“But yet, my dear Mr. B., if one could as easily, in the prime of sensual youth, look twenty years backward, what an empty vanity, what a mere nothing, will be all those grosser satisfactions, that now give wings of desire to our debased appetites!

“Motives of religion will have their due force upon your mind one day, I hope; as, blessed be God, they have enabled me to talk to you on such a touching point (after infinite struggles, I own,) with so much temper and resignation; and then, my dearest Mr. B., when we come to that last bed, from which the piety of our friends shall lift us, but from which we shall never be able to raise ourselves;