But pray, Sir, interrupting him, how came you to apprehend that I should revoke my intention? I had indeed deposited a letter to that purpose; but you had it not: and how, as I had reserved to myself the privilege of a revocation, did you know, but I might have prevailed upon my friends, and so have revoked upon good grounds?
“I will be very ingenuous, Madam—You had made me hope that if you changed your mind, you would give me a meeting to apprise me of the reasons for it. I went to the loose bricks, and I saw the letter there: and as I knew your friends were immovably fixed in their schemes, I doubted not but the letter was to revoke or suspend your resolution; and probably to serve instead of a meeting too. I therefore let it lie, that if you did revoke, you might be under the necessity of meeting me for the sake of the expectation you had given me: and as I came prepared, I was resolved, pardon me, Madam, whatever were your intentions, that you should not go back. Had I taken your letter I must have been determined by the contents of it, for the present at least: but not having received it, and you having reason to think I wanted not resolution in a situation so desperate, to make your friends a personal visit, I depended upon the interview you had bid me hope for.”
Wicked wretch, said I; it is my grief, that I gave you opportunity to take so exact a measure of my weakness!—But would you have presumed to visit the family, had I not met you?
Indeed I would. I had some friends in readiness, who were to have accompanied me to them. And had your father refused to give me audience, I would have taken my friends with me to Solmes.
And what did you intend to do to Mr. Solmes?
Not the least hurt, had the man been passive.
But had he not been passive, as you call it, what would you have done to Mr. Solmes?
He was loth, he said to tell me—yet not the least hurt to his person.
I repeated my question.
If he must tell me, he only proposed to carry off the poor fellow
, and to hide him for a month or two. And this he would have done, let what would have been the consequence.
Was ever such a wretch heard of!—I sighed from the bottom of my heart; but bid him proceed from the part I had interrupted him at.
“I ordered the fellow, as I told you, Madam, said he, to keep within view of the garden-door: and if he found any parley between us, and anybody coming (before you could retreat undiscovered) whose coming might be attended with violent effects, he should cry out; and this not only in order to save himself from their suspicions of him, but to give me warning to make off, and, if possible, to induce you (I own it, Madam) to go off with me, according to your own appointment. And I hope all circumstances considered, and the danger I was in of losing you forever, that the acknowledgement of that contrivance, or if you had not met me, that upon Solmes, will not procure me your hatred: for, had they come as I expected as well as you, what a despicable wretch had I been, could I have left you to the insults of a brother and other of your family, whose mercy was cruelty when they had not the pretence with which this detected interview would have furnished them!”
What a wretch! said I.—But if, Sir, taking your own account of this strange matter to be fact, anybody were coming, how happened it, that I saw only that man Leman (I thought it was he) out at the door, and at a distance, look after us?
Very lucky! said he, putting his hand first in one pocket, then in another—I hope I have not thrown it away—it is, perhaps, in the coat I had on yesterday—little did I think it would be necessary to be produced—but I love to come to a demonstration whenever I can—I may be giddy—I may be heedless. I am indeed—but no man, as to you, Madam, ever had a sincerer heart.
He then stepping to the parlour-door, called his servant to bring him the coat he had on yesterday.
The servant did. And in the pocket, rumpled up as a paper he regarded not, he pulled out a letter, written by that Joseph, dated Monday night; in which “he begs pardon for crying out so soon—says, That his fears of being discovered to act on both sides, had made him take the rushing of a little dog (that always follows him) through the phyllirea-hedge, for Betty’s being at hand, or some of his masters: and that when he found his mistake, he opened the door by his own key (which the contriving wretch confessed he had furnished him with) and inconsiderately ran out in a hurry, to have apprised him that his crying out was owing to his fright only:” and he added, “that they were upon the hunt for me, by the time he returned.”81
I shook my head—Deep! deep! deep! said I, at the best!—O Mr. Lovelace! God forgive and reform you!—But you are, I see plainly, (upon the whole of your own account), a very artful, a very designing man.
Love, my dearest life, is ingenious. Night and day have I racked my stupid brain (O Sir, thought I, not stupid! ’Twere well perhaps if it were) to contrive methods to prevent the sacrifice designed to be made of you, and the mischief that must have ensued upon it: so little hold in your affections: such undeserved antipathy from your friends: so much danger of losing you forever from both causes. I have
