Another letter was to be sent, or had been sent, to
her aunt Hervey, to which she hoped an answer.
Yet sometimes I think that fainter and fainter would
have been her procrastinations, had I been a man of
courage—but so fearful was I of offending!
A confounded thing! The man to be so bashful;
the woman to want so much courting!—How
shall two such come together—no kind mediatress
in the way?
But I must be contented. ’Tis seldom,
however, that a love so ardent as mine, meets with
a spirit so resigned in the same person. But
true love, I am now convinced, only wishes: nor
has it any active will but that of the adored object.
But, O the charming creature, again of herself to
mention London! Had Singleton’s plot been
of my own contriving, a more happy expedient could
not have been thought of to induce her to resume her
purpose of going thither; nor can I divine what could
be her reason for postponing it.
I enclose the letter from Joseph Leman, which I mentioned
to thee in mine of Monday last,* with my answer to
it. I cannot resist the vanity that urges me
to the communication. Otherwise, it were better,
perhaps, that I suffer thee to imagine that this lady’s
stars fight against her, and dispense the opportunities
in my favour, which are only the consequences of my
own invention.
To Robert Lovelace, ESQ. His
Honner
sat. April 15.
This is to let you Honner kno’, as how I have
been emploied in a bisness I would have been excused
from, if so be I could, for it is to gitt evidense
from a young man, who has of late com’d out to
be my cuzzen by my grandmother’s side; and but
lately come to live in these partes, about a very
vile thing, as younge master calls it, relating to
your Honner. God forbid I should call it so without
your leafe. It is not for so plane a man as
I be, to tacks my betters. It is consarning one
Miss Batirton, of Notingam; a very pretty crature,
belike.
Your Honner got her away, it seems, by a false letter
to her, macking believe as how her she-cuzzen, that
she derely loved, was coming to see her; and was tacken
ill upon the rode: and so Miss Batirton set out
in a shase, and one sarvant, to fet her cuzzen from
the inne where she laid sick, as she thote: and
the sarvant was tricked, and braute back the shase;
but Miss Batirton was not harde of for a month, or
so. And when it came to passe, that her frends
founde her out and would have prossekutid your Honner,
your Honner was gone abroad: and so she was broute
to bed, as one may say, before your Honner’s
return: and she got colde in her lyin-inn, and
lanquitched, and soon died: and the child is
living; but your Honner never troubles your Honner’s
hedd about it in the least. And this, and some
other matters, of verry bad reporte, ’Squier
Solmes was to tell my young lady of, if so be she would
have harde him speke, before we lost her sweet company,
as I may say, from heere.*
