and that thou
expectest him back in the morning. Thou hast fellows enough where thou
art at thy command. If I find any difficulty in seeing the lady, thy
messenger shall post away with this.--Let him look to broken bones, and
other consequences, if what he carries answer not thy expectation. But,
if I am admitted, thou shalt have this and the result of my audience both
together. In the former case, thou mayest send another servant to wait
the next advices from

J. BELFORD.

LETTER XVI

MR. BELFORD, TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ.
MONDAY, JULY 17.

About six this morning, I went to Rowland's. Mrs. Sinclair was to follow
me, in order to dismiss the action; but not to come in sight.

Rowland, upon inquiry, told me, that the lady was extremely ill; and that
she had desired, that no one but his wife or maid should come near her.

I said, I must see her. I had told him my business over-night, and I
must see her.

His wife went up: but returned presently, saying, she could not get her
to speak to her; yet that her eyelids moved; though she either would not,
or could not, open them, to look up at her.

Oons, woman, said I, the lady may be in a fit: the lady may be dying--let
me go up. Show me the way.

A horrid hole of a house, in an alley they call a court; stairs
wretchedly narrow, even to the first-floor rooms: and into a den they led
me, with broken walls, which had been papered, as I saw by a multitude of
tacks, and some torn bits held on by the rusty heads.

The floor indeed was clean, but the ceiling was smoked with variety of
figures, and initials of names, that had been the woeful employment of
wretches who had no other way to amuse themselves.

A bed at one corner, with coarse curtains tacked up at the feet to the
ceiling; because the curtain-rings were broken off; but a coverlid upon
it with a cleanish look, though plaguily in tatters, and the corners tied
up in tassels, that the rents in it might go no farther.

The windows dark and double-barred, the tops boarded up to save mending;
and only a little four-paned eyelet-hole of a casement to let in air;
more, however, coming in at broken panes than could come in at that.

Four old Turkey-worked chairs, bursten-bottomed, the stuffing staring
out.

An old, tottering, worm-eaten table, that had more nails bestowed in
mending it to make it stand, than the table cost fifty years ago, when
new.

On the mantle-piece was an iron shove-up candlestic