She then found her feet—­O house [look towards the windows, and all round her, O house,] contrived on purpose for my ruin! said she—­but let not that woman come into my presence—­not that Miss Horton neither, who would not have dared to controul me, had she not been a base one!—­

Hoh, Sir!  Hoh, Madam! vociferated the old dragon, her armed kemboed, and flourishing with one foot to the extent of her petticoats—­What’s ado here about nothing!  I never knew such work in my life, between a chicken of a gentleman and a tiger of a lady!—­

She was visibly affrighted:  and up stairs she hastened.  A bad woman is certainly, Jack, more terrible to her own sex than even a bad man.

I followed her up.  She rushed by her own apartment into the dining-room:  no terror can make her forget her punctilio.

To recite what passed there of invective, exclamations, threatenings, even of her own life, on one side; of expostulations, supplications, and sometimes menaces, on the other; would be too affecting; and, after my particularity in like scenes, these things may as well be imagined as expressed.

I will therefore only mention, that, at length, I extorted a concession from her.  She had reason* to think it would have been worse for her on the spot, if she had not made it.  It was, That she would endeavour to make herself easy till she saw what next Thursday, her uncle’s birth-day, would produce.  But Oh! that it were not a sin, she passionately exclaimed on making this poor concession, to put and end to her own life, rather than yield to give me but that assurance!

* The Lady mentions, in her memorandum-book, that she had no other way, as is apprehended, to save herself from instant dishonour, but by making this concession.  Her only hope, now, she says, if she cannot escape by Dorcas’s connivance, (whom, nevertheless she suspects,) is to find a way to engage the protection of her uncle, and even of the civil magistrate, on Thursday next, if necessary.  ‘He shall see,’ says she, ’tame and timid as he thought me, what I dare to do, to avoid so hated a compulsion, and a man capable of a baseness so premeditatedly vile and inhuman.’

This, however, shows me, that she is aware that the reluctantly-given assurance may be fairly construed into a matrimonial expectation on my side.  And if she will now, even now, look forward, I think, from my heart, that I will put on her livery, and wear it for life.

What a situation am I in, with all my cursed inventions!  I am puzzled, confounded, and ashamed of myself, upon the whole.  To take such pains to be a villain!—­But (for the fiftieth time) let me ask thee, Who would have thought that there had been such a woman in the world?—­ Nevertheless, she had best take care that she carries not her obstinacy much farther.  She knows not what revenge for slighted love will make me do.