But this lady has asserted the worthiness of her sex, and most gloriously has she exalted it with me now.  Yet, surely, as I have said and written an hundred times, there cannot be such another woman.

But as my loss in her departure is the greatest of any man’s, and as she was dearer to me than to any other person in the world, and once she herself wished to be so, what an insolence in any man breathing to pretend to avenge her on me!—­Happy! happy! thrice happy! had I known how to value, as I ought to have valued, the glory of such a preference!

I will not aggravate to myself this aggravation of the Colonel’s pretending to call me to account for my treatment of a lady so much my own, lest, in the approaching interview, my heart should relent for one so nearly related to her, and who means honour and justice to her memory; and I should thereby give him advantages which otherwise he cannot have.  For I know that I shall be inclined to trust to my skill, to save a man who was so much and so justly valued by her; and shall be loath to give way to my resentment, as a threatened man.  And in this respect only I am sorry for his skill, and his courage, lest I should be obliged, in my own defence, to add a chalk to a score that is already too long.

***

Indeed, indeed, Belford, I am, and shall be, to my latest hour, the most miserable of beings.  Such exalted generosity!—­Why didst thou put into my craving hands the copy of her will?  Why sentest thou to me the posthumous letter?—­What thou I was earnest to see the will? thou knewest what they both were [I did not]; and that it would be cruel to oblige me.

The meeting of twenty Colonel Mordens, were there twenty to meet in turn, would be nothing to me, would not give me a moment’s concern, as to my own safety:  but my reflections upon my vile ingratitude to so superior an excellence will ever be my curse.

Had she been a Miss Howe to me, and treated me as if I were a Hickman, I had had a call for revenge; and policy (when I had intended to be an husband) might have justified my attempts to humble her.  But a meek and gentle temper was her’s, though a true heroine, whenever honour or virtue called for an exertion of spirit.

Nothing but my cursed devices stood in the way of my happiness.  Remembrest thou not how repeatedly, from the first, I poured cold water upon her rising flame, by meanly and ungratefully turning upon her the injunctions, which virgin delicacy, and filial duty, induced her to lay me under before I got her into my power?*

* See Vol.  III.  Letter xv.  See also Letters XVII.  XLV.  XLVI. of that volume, and many other places.

Did she not tell me, and did I not know it, if she had not told me, that she could not be guilty of affectation or tyranny to the man whom she intended to marry?* I knew, as she once upbraided me, that from the time I had got her from her father’s house, I had a plain path before me.** True did she say, and I triumphed in the discovery, that from that time I held her soul in suspense an hundred times.*** My ipecacuanha trial alone was enough to convince an infidel that she had a mind in which love and tenderness would have presided, had I permitted the charming buds to put forth and blow.****