u to the insults of a brother and other of your
family, whose mercy was cruelty when they had not the pretence with
which this detected interview would have furnished them!'

What a wretch! said I.--But if, Sir, taking your own account of this
strange matter to be fact, any body were coming, how happened it, that I
saw only that man Leman (I thought it was he) out at the door, and at a
distance, look after us?

Very lucky! said he, putting his hand first in one pocket, then in
another--I hope I have not thrown it away--it is, perhaps, in the coat
I had on yesterday--little did I think it would be necessary to be
produced--but I love to come to a demonstration whenever I can--I may
be giddy--I may be heedless. I am indeed--but no man, as to you, Madam,
ever had a sincerer heart.

He then stepping to the parlour-door, called his servant to bring him
the coat he had on yesterday.

The servant did. And in the pocket, rumpled up as a paper he regarded
not, he pulled out a letter, written by that Joseph, dated Monday night;
in which 'he begs pardon for crying out so soon--says, That his fears of
being discovered to act on both sides, had made him take the rushing of
a little dog (that always follows him) through the phyllirea-hedge, for
Betty's being at hand, or some of his masters: and that when he found
his mistake, he opened the door by his own key (which the contriving
wretch confessed he had furnished him with) and inconsiderately ran out
in a hurry, to have apprized him that his crying out was owing to his
fright only:' and he added, 'that they were upon the hunt for me, by the
time he returned.*

* See his Letter to Joseph Leman, Vol.III. No.III. towards the end, where
he tells him, he would contrive for him a letter of this nature to copy.

I shook my head--Deep! deep! deep! said I, at the best!--O Mr. Lovelace!
God forgive and reform you!--But you are, I see plainly, (upon the whole
of your own account,) a very artful, a very designing man.

Love, my dearest life, is ingenious. Night and day have I racked my
stupid brain [O Sir, thought I, not stupid! 'Twere well perhaps if it
were] to contrive methods to prevent the sacrifice designed to be made
of you, and the mischief that must have ensued upon it: so little hold
in your affections: such undeserved antipathy from your friends: so much
danger of losing you for ever from both causes. I have not had for the
whole fortnight before last Monday, half an