ed scheme of
her's, and to take measures upon it which shall enable her to abandon and
renounce me for ever. Now, Jack, if I obtain not admission to her
presence on my return; but am refused with haughtiness; if her week be
insisted upon (such prospects before her); I shall be confirmed in my
conjecture; and it will be plain to me, that weak at best was that love,
which could give place to punctilio, at a time when that all-reconciling
ceremony, as she must think, waits her command:--then will I recollect
all her perversenesses; then will I re-peruse Miss Howe's letters, and
the transcripts from others of them; give way to my aversion to the life
of shackles: and then shall she be mine in my own way.

But, after all, I am in hopes that she will have better considered of
every thing by the evening; that her threat of a week's distance was
thrown out in the heat of passion; and that she will allow, that I have
as much cause to quarrel with her for breach of her word, as she has with
me for breach of the peace.

These lines of Rowe have got into my head; and I shall repeat them very
devoutly all the way the chairman shall poppet me towards her by-and-by.

Teach me, some power, the happy art of speech,
To dress my purpose up in gracious words;
Such as may softly steal upon her soul,
And never waken the tempestuous passions.

LETTER XIX

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
THURSDAY EVENING, JUNE 8.

O for a curse to kill with!--Ruined! Undone! Outwitted!
Tricked!--Zounds, man, the lady has gone off!--Absolutely gone off!
Escaped!--

Thou knowest not, nor canst conceive, the pangs that wring my heart!--
What can I do!--O Lord, O Lord, O Lord!

And thou, too, who hast endeavoured to weaken my hands, wilt but clap thy
dragon's wings at the tidings!

Yet I must write, or I shall go distracted! Little less have I been
these two hours; dispatching messengers to every stage, to every inn, to
every waggon or coach, whether flying or creeping, and to every house
with a bill up, for five miles around.

The little hypocrite, who knows not a soul in this town, [I thought I was
sure of her at any time,] such an unexperienced traitress--giving me hope
too, in her first billet, that her expectation of the family-
reconciliation would withhold her from taking such a step as this--curse
upon her contrivances!--I thought, that it was owing to her bashfulness,
to her modesty, that, after a few in