looked so confounded, that I made an excuse for her, which gratified
both. Mrs. Betty, said I, I have been so much pleased with the neatness
of your dairy-works, that I could not help saluting your sister: you
have your share of merit in them, I am sure--Give me leave----

Good souls!--I like them both--she courtesied too!--How I love a
grateful temper! O that my Clarissa were but half so acknowledging!

I think I must get one of them to attend my charmer when she
removes--the mother seems to be a notable woman. She had not best,
however, be too notable: since, were she by suspicion to give me a face
of difficulty to the matter, it would prepare me for a trial with one or
both the daughters.

Allow me a little rhodamantade, Jack--but really and truly my heart is
fixed. I can think of no creature breathing of the sex, but my Gloriana.

LETTER XIV

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. [IN CONTINUATION.]

This is Wednesday; the day that I was to have lost my charmer for ever
to the hideous Solmes! With what high satisfaction and heart's-ease can
I now sit down, and triumph over my men in straw at Harlowe-place! Yet
'tis perhaps best for them, that she got off as she did. Who knows what
consequences might have followed upon my attending her in; or (if she
had not met me) upon my projected visit, followed by my myrmidons?

But had I even gone in with her unaccompanied, I think I had but little
reason for apprehension: for well thou knowest, that the tame spirits
which value themselves upon reputation, and are held within the skirts
of the law by political considerations only, may be compared to an
infectious spider; which will run into his hole the moment one of his
threads is touched by a finger that can crush him, leaving all his toils
defenceless, and to be brushed down at the will of the potent invader.
While a silly fly, that has neither courage nor strength to resist,
no sooner gives notice, by its buz and its struggles, of its being
entangled, but out steps the self-circumscribed tyrant, winds round and
round the poor insect, till he covers it with his bowel-spun toils; and
when so fully secured, that it can neither move leg nor wing, suspends
it, as if for a spectacle to be exulted over: then stalking to the door
of his cell, turns about, glotes over it at a distance; and, sometimes
advancing, sometimes retiring, preys at leisure upon its vitals.

But now I think of it, will not this comparison do as w