will.  The very contrary.  But now are we come to the test, whether she cannot be brought to make the best of an irreparable evil.  If she exclaim, [she has reason to exclaim, and I will sit down with patience by the hour together to hear her exclamations, till she is tired of them,] she will then descend to expostulation perhaps:  expostulation will give me hope:  expostulation will show that she hates me not.  And, if she hate me not, she will forgive:  and, if she now forgive, then will all be over; and she will be mine upon my own terms:  and it shall then be the whole study of my future life to make her happy.

* See Vol.  III.  Letter XVIII.

So, Belford, thou seest that I have journeyed on to this stage [indeed, through infinite mazes, and as infinite remorses] with one determined point in view from the first.  To thy urgent supplication then, that I will do her grateful justice by marriage, let me answer in Matt.  Prior’s two lines on his hoped-for auditorship; as put into the mouths of his St. John and Harley;

      —–­Let that be done, which Matt. doth say. 
      Yea, quoth the Earl—­but not to-day.

Thou seest, Jack, that I make no resolutions, however, against doing her, one time or other, the wished-for justice, even were I to succeed in my principal view, cohabitation.  And of this I do assure thee, that, if I ever marry, it must, it shall be Miss Clarissa Harlowe.—­Nor is her honour at all impaired with me, by what she has so far suffered:  but the contrary.  She must only take care that, if she be at last brought to forgive me, she show me that her Lovelace is the only man on earth whom she could have forgiven on the like occasion.

But ah, Jack! what, in the mean time, shall I do with this admirable creature?  At present—­[I am loth to say it—­but, at present] she is quite stupified.

I had rather, methinks, she should have retained all her active powers, though I had suffered by her nails and her teeth, than that she should be sunk into such a state of absolute—­insensibility (shall I call it?) as she has been in every since Tuesday morning.  Yet, as she begins a little to revive, and now-and-then to call names, and to exclaim, I dread almost to engage with the anguish of a spirit that owes its extraordinary agitations to a niceness that has no example either in ancient or modern story.  For, after all, what is there in her case that should stupify such a glowing, such a blooming charmer?—­Excess of grief, excess of terror, have made a person’s hair stand on end, and even (as we have read) changed the colour of it.  But that it should so stupify, as to make a person, at times, insensible to those imaginary wrongs, which would raise others from stupifaction, is very surprising!

But I will leave this subject, least it should make me too grave.

I was yesterday at Hampstead, and discharged all obligations there, with no small applause.  I told them that the lady was now as happy as myself:  and that is no great untruth; for I am not altogether so, when I allow myself to think.