d in my
heart! what a chilness in my blood, as if its circulation was arrested!
From her room to my own; in the dining-room, and in and out of every
place where I have seen the beloved of my heart, do I hurry; in none can
I tarry; her lovely image in every one, in some lively attitude, rushing
cruelly upon me, in differently remembered conversations.

But when in my first fury, at my return, I went up two pairs of stairs,
resolved to find the locked-up Dorcas, and beheld the vainly-burnt
window-board, and recollected my baffled contrivances, baffled by my own
weak folly, I thought my distraction completed; and down I ran as one
frighted at a spectre, ready to howl for vexation; my head and my temples
shooting with a violence I had never felt before; and my back aching as
if the vertebrae were disjointed, and falling in pieces.

But now that I have heard the mother's story, and contemplated the
dawning hopes given by the chairman's information, I am a good deal
easier, and can make cooler reflections. Most heartily pray I for
Will.'s success, every four or five minutes. If I lose her, all my rage
will return with redoubled fury. The disgrace to be thus outwitted by a
novice, an infant in stratagem and contrivance, added to the violence of
my passion for her, will either break my heart, or (what saves many a
heart, in evils insupportable) turn my brain. What had I to do to go out
a license-hunting, at least till I had seen her, and made up matters with
her? And indeed, were it not the privilege of a principal to lay all his
own faults upon his underlings, and never be to blame himself, I should
be apt to reflect, that I am more in fault than any body. And, as the
sting of this reflection will sharpen upon me, if I recover her not, how
shall I ever be able to bear it?

If ever--

[Here Mr. Lovelace lays himself under a curse, too shocking to be
repeated, if he revenge not himself upon the Lady, should he once more
get her into his hands.]

***

I have just now dismissed the sniveling toad Dorcas, who was introduced
to me for my pardon by the whining mother. I gave her a kind of negative
and ungracious forgiveness. Yet I shall as violently curse the two
nymphs, by-and-by, for the consequences of my own folly: and if this will
be a good way too to prevent their ridicule upon me, for losing so
glorious an opportunity as I had last night, or rather this morning.

I have corrected, from the result of the i