I wish I might be permitted to see it, Sir, or to hear such parts of it read as you shall think proper.

Turning over my papers, Here it is, Sir.* I will make no scruple to put it into your hands.

This is very obliging, Mr. Lovelace.

He read it.  My charming cousin!—­How strong her resentments!—­Yet how charitable her wishes!—­Good Heaven! that such an excellent creature—­ But, Mr. Lovelace, it is to your regret, as much as to mine, I doubt not —­

Interrupting him, I swore that it was.

So it ought, said he.  Nor do I wonder that it should be so.  I shall tell you by-and-by, proceeded he, how much she suffers with her friends by false and villanous reports.  But, Sir, will you permit me to take with me these two letters?  I shall make use of them to the advantage of you both.

I told him I would oblige him with all my heart.  And this he took very kindly (as he had reason); and put them in his pocket-book, promising to return hem in a few days.

I then told him, ’That upon this her refusal, I took upon myself to go to town, in hopes to move her in my favour; and that, though I went without giving her notice of my intention, yet had she got some notion of my coming, and so contrived to be out of the way:  and at last, when she found I was fully determined at all events to see her, before I went abroad, (which I shall do, said I, if I cannot prevail upon her,) she sent me the letter I have already mentioned to you, desiring me to suspend my purposed visit:  and that for a reason which amazes and confounds me; because I don’t find there is any thing in it:  and yet I never knew her once dispense with her word; for she always made it a maxim, that it was not lawful to do evil, that good might come of it:  and yet in this letter, for no reason in the world but to avoid seeing me (to gratify an humour only) has she sent me out of town, depending upon the assurance she had given me.’

Col.  This is indeed surprising.  But I cannot believe that my cousin, for such an end only, or indeed for any end, according to the character I hear of her, should stoop to make use of such an artifice.

Lovel.  This, Colonel, is the thing that astonishes me; and yet, see here!—­This is the letter she wrote me—­Nay, Sir, ’tis her own hand.

Col.  I see it is; and a charming hand it is.

Lovel.  You observe, Colonel, that all her hopes of reconciliation with her parents are from you.  You are her dear blessed friend!  She always talked of you with delight.

Col.  Would to Heaven I had come to England before she left Harlowe-place!—­Nothing of this had then happened.  Not a man of those whom I have heard that her friends proposed for her should have had her.  Nor you, Mr. Lovelace, unless I had found you to be the man every one who sees you must wish you to be:  and if you had been that man, no one living should I have preferred to you for such an excellence.