you acted by my instructions:”  another time to the same, “We have been both sinners, and must be both included in one act of grace:”—­when I was thus lifted up to the state of a sovereign forgiver, and my lordly master became a petitioner for himself, and the guilty creature, whom he put under my feet; what a triumph was here for the poor Pamela? and could I have been guilty of so mean a pride, as to trample upon the poor abject creature, when I found her thus lowly, thus mortified, and wholly in my power?

Then, my dear ladies, while I was enjoying the soul-charming fruits of that innocence which the Divine Grace had enabled me to preserve, in spite of so many plots and contrivances on my master’s side, and such wicked instigations and assistances on hers, and all my prospects were improving upon me beyond my wishes; when all was unclouded sunshine, and I possessed my mind in peace, and had only to be thankful to Providence, which had been so gracious to my unworthiness; when I saw my persecutor become my protector, my active enemy no longer my enemy, but creeping with slow, doubtful feet, and speaking to me with awful hesitating doubt of my acceptance; a stamp of an insolent foot now turned into curtseying half-bent knees; threatening hands into supplicating folds; and the eye unpitying to innocence, running over with the sense of her own guilt; a faltering accent on her late menacing tongue, and uplifted handkerchief, “I see she will be my lady:  and then I know how it will go with me!”—­Was not this, my ladies, a triumph of triumphs to the late miserable, now exalted, Pamela!—­could I do less than pardon her?  And having declared that I did so, was I not to shew the sincerity of my declaration?

Would it not have shewn my master, that the low-born Pamela was incapable of a generous action, had she refused the only request her humble condition had given her the opportunity of granting, at that time, with innocence?  Would he not have thought the humble cottager as capable of insolence, and vengeance too, in her turn, as the better born? and that she wanted but the power, to shew the like unrelenting temper, by which she had so grievously suffered?  And might not this have given him room to think me (and to have resumed and prosecuted his purposes accordingly) fitter for an arrogant kept mistress, than an humble and obliged wife!

“I see” (might he not have said?), “the girl has strong passions and resentments; and she that has, will be sometimes governed by them.  I will improve upon the hint she herself has now given me, by her inexorable temper:  I will gratify her revenge, till I turn it upon herself:  I will indulge her pride, till I make it administer to her fall; for a wife I cannot think of in the low-born cottager, especially when she has lurking in her all the pride and arrogance” (you know, my ladies, his haughty way of speaking of our sex) “of the better descended.  And by a little perseverance, and watching her unguarded hours, and applying temptations to her passions, I shall first discover them, and then make my advantage of them.”