t to deprive him of hopes
dearer to him than life.

I told him, he might be assured, that the severity and ill-usage I
met with would be far from effecting the proposed end: that although I
could, with great sincerity, declare for a single life (which had always
been my choice); and particularly, that if ever I married, if they would
not insist upon the man I had an aversion to, it should not be with the
man they disliked--

He interrupted me here: He hoped I would forgive him for it; but
he could not help expressing his great concern, that, after so many
instances of his passionate and obsequious devotion--

And pray, Sir, said I, let me interrupt you in my turn;--Why don't you
assert, in still plainer words, the obligation you have laid me under by
this your boasted devotion? Why don't you let me know, in terms as high
as your implication, that a perseverance I have not wished for, which
has set all my relations at variance with me, is a merit that throws
upon me the guilt of ingratitude for not having answered it as you seem
to expect?

I must forgive him, he said, if he, who pretended only to a comparative
merit, (and otherwise thought no man living could deserve me,) had
presumed to hope for a greater share in my favour, than he had hitherto
met with, when such men as Mr. Symmes, Mr. Wyerley, and now, lastly, so
vile a reptile as this Solmes, however discouraged by myself, were made
his competitors. As to the perseverance I mentioned, it was impossible
for him not to persevere: but I must needs know, that were he not in
being, the terms Solmes had proposed were such, as would have involved
me in the same difficulties with my relations that I now laboured under.
He therefore took the liberty to say, that my favour to him, far from
increasing those difficulties, would be the readiest way to extricate me
from them. They had made it impossible [he told me, with too much truth]
to oblige them any way, but by sacrificing myself to Solmes. They were
well apprized besides of the difference between the two; one, whom they
hoped to manage as they pleased; the other, who could and would protect
me from every insult; and who had natural prospects much superior to my
brother's foolish views of a title.

How comes this man to know so well all our foibles? But I more wonder,
how he came to have a notion of meeting me in this place?

I was very uneasy to be gone; and the more as the night came on apace.
But there was no get