“But to my great disappointment, Pamela never, by any favourable glance, gave the least encouragement to my vanity.  ‘Well,’ thought I, ’this girl has certainly nothing ethereal in her mould:  all unanimated clay!—­But the dancing and singing airs my mother is teaching her, will better qualify her in time, and another year will ripen her into my arms, no doubt of it.  Let me only go on thus, and make her fear me:  that will enhance in her mind every favour I shall afterwards vouchsafe to shew her:  and never question old humdrum Virtue,’ thought I, ’but the tempter without, and the tempter within, will be too many for the perversest nicety that ever the sex boasted.’

“Yet, though I could not once attract her eye towards me, she never failed to draw mine after her, whenever she went by me, or wherever I saw her, except, as I said, in my mother’s presence; and particularly when she had passed me, and could not see me look at her, without turning her head, as I expected so often from her in vain.

“You will wonder, Lord Davers, who, I suppose, was once in love, or you’d never have married such an hostile spirit as my sister’s there-”

“Go on, sauce—­box,” said she, “I won’t interrupt you.”

“You will wonder how I could behave so coolly as to escape all discovery so long from a lady so watchful as my mother, and from the apprehensiveness of the girl.

“But, to say nothing of her tender years, and that my love was not of this bashful sort, I was not absolutely determined, so great was my pride, that I ought to think her worthy of being my mistress, when I had not much reason, as I thought, to despair of prevailing upon persons of higher birth (were I disposed to try) to live with me upon my own terms.  My pride, therefore, kept my passion at bay, as I may say:  so far was I from imagining I should ever be brought to what has since happened!  But to proceed: 

“Hitherto my mind was taken up with the beauties of her person only.  My EYE had drawn my HEART after it, without giving myself any trouble about that sense and judgment which my mother was always praising in her Pamela, as exceeding her years and opportunities:  but an occasion happened, which, though slight in itself, took the HEAD into the party, and I thought of her, young as she was, with a distinction, that before I had not for her.  It was this: 

“Being with my mother in her closet, who was talking to me on the old subject, matrimony, I saw Pamela’s commonplace book, as I may call it; in which, by her lady’s direction, from time to time, she had transcribed from the Bible, and other good books, such passages as most impressed her as she read—­A method, I take it, my dear” (turning to me), “of great service to you, as it initiated you into writing with that freedom and ease, which shine in your saucy letters and journals; and to which my present fetters are not a little owing:  just as pedlars catch monkeys in the baboon kingdoms, provoking the attentive fools, by their own example, to put on shoes and stockings, till the apes of imitation, trying to do the like, entangle their feet, and so cannot escape upon the boughs of the tree of liberty, on which before they were wont to hop and skip about, and play a thousand puggish tricks.