She stopped here, and, sighing, turned her sweet face from me, drying up with her handkerchief those tears which she endeavoured to restrain; and, when she could not, to conceal from my sight.
As I told thee, I had prepared myself for high passions, raving, flying, tearing execration; these transient violences, the workings of sudden grief, and shame, and vengeance, would have set us upon a par with each other, and quitted scores. These have I been accustomed to; and as nothing violent is lasting, with these I could have wished to encounter. But such a majestic composure—seeking me—whom, yet it is plain, by her attempt to get away, she would have avoided seeking—no Lucretia-like vengeance upon herself in her thought—yet swallowed up, her whole mind swallowed up, as I may say, by a grief so heavy, as, in her own words, to be beyond the power of speech to express—and to be able, discomposed as she was, to the very morning, to put such a home-question to me, as if she had penetrated my future view—how could I avoid looking like a fool, and answering, as before, in broken sentences and confusion?
What—what-a—what has been done—I, I, I—cannot but say—must own—must confess—hem—hem—is not right—is not what should have been—but-a—but—but—I am truly—truly—sorry for it—upon my soul I am—and—and—will do all—do everything—do what—whatever is incumbent upon me—all that you—that you—that you shall require, to make you amends!—
O Belford! Belford! whose the triumph now! Hers, or mine?
Amends! O thou truly despicable wretch! Then lifting up her eyes—Good Heaven! who shall pity the creature who could fall by so base a mind!—Yet—(and then she looked indignantly upon me!) yet, I hate thee not (base and low-souled as thou art!) half so much as I hate myself, that I saw thee not sooner in thy proper colours! That I hoped either morality, gratitude, or humanity, from a libertine, who, to be a libertine, must have got over and defied all moral sanctions.247
She then called upon her cousin Morden’s name, as if he had warned her against a man of free principles; and walked towards the window; her handkerchief at her eyes. But, turning short towards me, with an air of mingled scorn and majesty, (what, at the moment, would I have given never to have injured her!) What amends hast thou to propose! What amends can such a one as thou make to a person of spirit, or common sense, for the evils thou hast so inhumanely made me suffer?
As soon, Madam—as soon—as—as soon as your uncle—or—not waiting—
Thou wouldest tell me, I suppose—I know what thou wouldest tell me—But thinkest thou, that marriage will satisfy for a guilt like thine? Destitute as thou hast made me both of friends and fortune, I too much despise the wretch, who could rob himself of his wife’s virtue, to endure the thoughts of thee in the light thou seemest to hope I will accept thee in!—
I hesitated an interruption; but my meaning died away upon my trembling lips. I could only pronounce the word marriage—and thus she proceeded:
Let me, therefore, know whether I am to be controlled in the future disposal of myself? Whether, in a country of liberty, as this, where the sovereign of it must not be guilty of your wickedness, and where you neither durst have attempted it, had I one friend or relation to look upon me, I am to be kept here a prisoner, to sustain fresh injuries? Whether, in a word, you intend to hinder me from going where my destiny shall lead me?
After a pause—for I was still silent:
Can you not answer me this plain question?—I quit all claim, all expectation, upon you—what right have you to detain me here?
I could not speak. What could I say to such a question?
O wretch! wringing her uplifted hands, had I not been robbed of my senses, and that in the basest manner—you best know how—had I been able to account for myself, and your proceedings, or to have known but how the days passed—a whole week should not have gone over my head, as I find it has done, before I had told you, what I now tell you—That the man who has been the villain to me you have been, shall never make me his wife.—I will write to my uncle, to lay aside his kind intentions in my favour—all my prospects are shut in—I give myself up for a lost creature as to this world—hinder me not from entering upon a life of severe penitence, for corresponding, after prohibition, with a wretch who has too well justified all their warnings and inveteracy; and for throwing myself into the power of your vile artifices. Let me try to secure the only hope I have left. This is all the amends I ask of you. I repeat, therefore, Am I now at liberty to dispose of myself as I please?
Now comes the fool, the miscreant again, hesitating his broken answer: My dearest love, I am confounded, quite confounded, at the thought of what—of what has been done; and at the thought of—to whom. I see, I see, there is no withstanding your eloquence!—Such irresistible proofs of the love of virtue, for its own sake, did I never hear of, nor meet with, in all my reading. And if you can forgive a repentant villain, who thus on his knees implores your forgiveness, (then down I dropped, absolutely in earnest in all I said), I
