He interrupted me—­Why, my dearest life, if you will hear me with patience—­yet, I am half afraid that I have been too forward, as I have not consulted you upon it—­but as my friends in town, according to what Mr. Doleman has written, in the letter you have seen, conclude us to be married—­

Surely, Sir, you have not presumed—­

Hear me out, my dearest creature—­you have received with favour, my addresses:  you have made me hope for the honour of your consenting hand:  yet, by declining my most fervent tender of myself to you at Mrs. Sorlings’s, have given me apprehensions of delay:  I would not for the world be thought so ungenerous a wretch, now you have honoured me with your confidence, as to wish to precipitate you.  Yet your brother’s schemes are not given up.  Singleton, I am afraid, is actually in town; his vessel lies at Rotherhithe—­your brother is absent from Harlowe-place; indeed not with Singleton yet, as I can hear.  If you are known to be mine, or if you are but thought to be so, there will probably be an end of your brother’s contrivances.  The widow’s character may be as worthy as it is said to be.  But the worthier she is, the more danger, if your brother’s agent should find us out; since she may be persuaded, that she ought in conscience to take a parent’s part against a child who stands in opposition to them.  But if she believes us married, her good character will stand us instead, and give her a reason why two apartments are requisite for us at the hour of retirement.

I perfectly raved at him.  I would have flung from him in resentment; but he would not let me:  and what could I do?  Whither go, the evening advanced?

I am astonished at you! said I.—­If you are a man of honour, what need of all this strange obliquity?  You delight in crooked ways—­let me know, since I must stay in your company (for he held my hand), let me know all you have said to the people below.—­Indeed, indeed, Mr. Lovelace, you are a very unaccountable man.

My dearest creature, need I to have mentioned any thing of this? and could I not have taken up my lodgings in this house unknown to you, if I had not intended to make you the judge of all my proceedings?—­But this is what I have told the widow before her kinswomen, and before your new servant—­’That indeed we were privately married at Hertford; but that you had preliminarily bound me under a solemn vow, which I am most religiously resolved to keep, to be contented with separate apartments, and even not to lodge under the same roof, till a certain reconciliation shall take place, which is of high consequence to both.’  And further that I might convince you of the purity of my intentions, and that my whole view in this was to prevent mischief, I have acquainted them, ’that I have solemnly promised to behave to you before every body, as if we were only betrothed, and not married; not even offering to take any of those innocent freedoms which are not refused in the most punctilious loves.’