Butt wonce moer, begging your Honner’s parden,
and promissing all dilligence and exsackness, I reste,
Your Honner’s dewtiful sarvant to command,
Joseph Leman.
Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford,
ESQ.
St. Alban’s, Monday night.
I snatch a few moments while my beloved is retired,
[as I hope, to rest,] to perform my promise.
No pursuit—nor have I apprehensions of
any; though I must make my charmer dread that there
will be one.
And now, let me tell thee, that never was joy so complete
as mine!—But let me inquire, is not the
angel flown away?
O no! She is in the next apartment!—Securely
mine!—Mine for ever!
O ecstasy!—My
heart will burst my breast,
To leap into her
bosom!
I knew that the whole stupid family were in a combination
to do my business for me. I told thee that they
were all working for me, like so many ground moles;
and still more blind than the moles are said to be,
unknowing that they did so. I myself, the director
of their principal motions; which falling in with
the malice of their little hearts, they took to be
all their own.
But did I say my joy was perfect?—O no!—It
receives some abatement from my disgusted bride.
For how can I endure to think that I owe more to her
relations’ precautions than to her favour for
me?—Or even, as far as I know, to her preference
of me to another man?
But let me not indulge this thought. Were I
to do so, it might cost my charmer dear. Let
me rejoice, that she has passed the rubicon: that
she cannot return: that, as I have ordered it,
the flight will appear to the implacables to be altogether
with her own consent: and that if I doubt her
love, I can put her to trials as mortifying to her
niceness, as glorious to my pride.—For,
let me tell thee, dearly as I love her, if I thought
there was but the shadow of a doubt in her mind whether
she preferred me to any man living, I would shew her
no mercy.
But, on the wings of love, I fly to my charmer, who
perhaps by this time is rising to encourage the tardy
dawn. I have not slept a wink of the hour and
half I lay down to invite sleep. It seems to
me, that I am not so much body, as to require such
a vulgar renovation.
But why, as in the chariot, as in the inn, at alighting,
all heart-bursting grief, my dearest creature?
So persecuted as thou wert persecuted!—So
much in danger of the most abhorred compulsion!—Yet
grief so unsuspectedly sincere for an escape so critical!—Take
care, take care, O beloved of my soul! for jealous
is the heart in which love has erected a temple to
thee.
Yet, it must be allowed, that such a sudden transition
must affect her; must ice her over. When a little
more used to her new situation; when her hurries are
at an end; when she sees how religiously I shall observe
all her injunctions; she will undoubtedly have
the gratitude to distinguish between the confinement
she has escaped from, and the liberty she has reason
to rejoice in.
