Mrs. Townsend, with her tars, had not been then there.  I told them what I would have them say to her, if she came.

Well, but, after all [how many after-all’s have I?] I could be very grave, were I to give way to it.—­The devil take me for a fool!  What’s the matte with me, I wonder!—­I must breathe a fresher air for a few days.

But what shall I do with this admirable creature the while?—­Hang me, if I know!—­For, if I stir, the venomous spider of this habitation will want to set upon the charming fly, whose silken wings are already so entangled in my enormous web, that she cannot move hand or foot:  for so much has grief stupified her, that she is at present destitute of will, as she always seemed to be of desire.  I must not therefore think of leaving her yet for two days together.

LETTER XV

Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, ESQ.

I have just now had a specimen of what the resentment of this dear creature will be when quite recovered:  an affecting one!—­For entering her apartment after Dorcas; and endeavouring to soothe and pacify her disordered mind; in the midst of my blandishments, she held up to Heaven, in a speechless agony, the innocent license (which she has in her own power); as the poor distressed Catalans held up their English treaty, on an occasion that keeps the worst of my actions in countenance.

She seemed about to call down vengeance upon me; when, happily the leaden god, in pity to her trembling Lovelace, waved over her half-drowned eyes his somniferous want, and laid asleep the fair exclaimer, before she could go half through with her intended imprecation.

Thou wilt guess, by what I have written, that some little art has been made use of:  but it was with a generous design (if thou’lt allow me the word on such an occasion) in order to lessen the too-quick sense she was likely to have of what she was to suffer.  A contrivance I never had occasion for before, and had not thought of now, if Mrs. Sinclair had not proposed it to me:  to whom I left the management of it:  and I have done nothing but curse her ever since, lest the quantity should have for ever dampened her charming intellects.

Hence my concern—­for I think the poor lady ought not to have been so treated.  Poor lady, did I say?—­What have I to do with thy creeping style?—­But have not I the worst of it; since her insensibility has made me but a thief to my own joys?

I did not intend to tell thee of this little innocent trick; for such I designed it to be; but that I hate disingenuousness:  to thee, especially:  and as I cannot help writing in a more serious vein than usual, thou wouldst perhaps, had I not hinted the true cause, have imagined that I was sorry for the fact itself:  and this would have given thee a good deal of trouble in scribbling dull persuasives to repair by matrimony; and me in reading thy cruel