mself on a level with her, as to guilt, "We are
both in generous hands: and, indeed, if Pamela did not pardon _you_,
I should think she but half forgave _me_, because you acted by my
instructions:" another time to the same, "We have been both sinners,
and must be both included in one act of grace:"--when I was thus
lifted up to the state of a sovereign forgiver, and my lordly master
became a petitioner for himself, and the guilty creature, whom he put
under my feet; what a triumph was here for the poor Pamela? and could
I have been guilty of so mean a pride, as to trample upon the poor
abject creature, when I found her thus lowly, thus mortified, and
wholly in my power?

Then, my dear ladies, while I was enjoying the soul-charming fruits of
that innocence which the Divine Grace had enabled me to preserve, in
spite of so many plots and contrivances on my master's side, and such
wicked instigations and assistances on hers, and all my prospects were
improving upon me beyond my wishes; when all was unclouded sunshine,
and I possessed my mind in peace, and had only to be thankful to
Providence, which had been so gracious to my unworthiness; when I saw
my persecutor become my protector, my active enemy no longer my enemy,
but creeping with slow, doubtful feet, and speaking to me with awful
hesitating doubt of my acceptance; a stamp of an insolent foot
now turned into curtseying half-bent knees; threatening hands into
supplicating folds; and the eye unpitying to innocence, running
over with the sense of her own guilt; a faltering accent on her late
menacing tongue, and uplifted handkerchief, "I see she will be my
lady: and then I know how it will go with me!"--Was not this, my
ladies, a triumph of triumphs to the late miserable, now exalted,
Pamela!--could I do less than pardon her? And having declared that I
did so, was I not to shew the sincerity of my declaration?

Would it not have shewn my master, that the low-born Pamela was
incapable of a generous action, had she refused the only request her
humble condition had given her the opportunity of granting, at that
time, with innocence? Would he not have thought the humble cottager
as capable of insolence, and vengeance too, in her turn, as the better
born? and that she wanted but the power, to shew the like unrelenting
temper, by which she had so grievously suffered? And might not this
have given him room to think me (and to have resumed and prosecuted
his purposes accordin