it, Madam, is for the sake of
your uncle, and for your own sake, more (I will say to Mr. Lovelace's
face) than for his. What can I have in view but peace and
reconciliation? I have, from the first, blamed, and I now, again, blame
Mr. Lovelace, for adding distress to distress, and terror to terror; the
lady, as you acknowledge, Sir, [looking valiantly,] ready before to fall
into fits.

Lovel. Let me own to you, Captain Tomlinson, that I have been a very
faulty, a very foolish man; and, if this dear creature ever honoured me
with her love, an ungrateful one. But I have had too much reason to
doubt it. And this is now a flagrant proof that she never had the value
for me which my proud heart wished for; that, with such prospects before
us; a day so near; settlements approved and drawn; her uncle meditating a
general reconciliation which, for her sake, not my own, I was desirous to
give into; she can, for an offence so really slight, on an occasion so
truly accidental, renounce me for ever; and, with me, all hopes of that
reconciliation in the way her uncle had put it in, and she had acquiesced
with; and risque all consequences, fatal ones as they may too possibly
be.--By my soul, Captain Tomlinson, the dear creature must have hated me
all the time she was intending to honour me with her hand. And now she
must resolve to abandon me, as far as I know, with a preference in her
heart of the most odious of men--in favour of that Solmes, who, as you
tell me, accompanies her brother: and with what hopes, with what view,
accompanies him!--How can I bear to think of this?--

Cl. It is fit, Sir, that you should judge of my regard for you by your
own conscienceness of demerit. Yet you know, or you would not have dared
to behave to me as sometimes you did, that you had more of it than you
deserved.

She walked from us; and then returning, Captain Tomlinson, said she, I
will own to you, that I was not capable of resolving to give my hand, and
--nothing but my hand. Had I not given a flagrant proof of this to the
once most indulgent of parents? which has brought me into a distress,
which this man has heightened, when he ought, in gratitude and honour, to
have endeavoured to render it supportable. I had even a bias, Sir, in
his favour, I scruple not to own it. Long (much too long!) bore I with
his unaccountable ways, attributing his errors to unmeaning gaiety, and
to a want of knowing what true delicacy, and true generosity