n! And all for my sake, I
warrant!--I can never reward you for them!--Never think of me more I
beseech you--How can you have patience with me?--Nothing has been
owing to your own behaviour, I presume: nothing to your defiances for
defiances: nothing to your resolution declared more than once, that you
would be related to a family, which, nevertheless, you would not stoop
to ask a relation of: nothing, in short to courses which every body
blamed you for, you not thinking it worth your while to justify
yourself. Had I not thought you used in an ungentlemanly manner, as I
have heretofore told you, you had not had my notice by pen and ink.*
That notice gave you a supposed security, and you generously defied
my friends the more for it: and this brought upon me (perhaps not
undeservedly) my father's displeasure; without which, my brother's
private pique, and selfish views, would have wanted a foundation to
build upon: so that for all that followed of my treatment, and your
redundant only's, I might thank you principally, as you may yourself for
all your sufferings, your mighty sufferings!--And if, voluble Sir, you
have founded any merit upon them, be so good as to revoke it: and
look upon me, with my forfeited reputation, as the only sufferer--For
what--pray hear me out, Sir [for he was going to speak] have you
suffered in but your pride? Your reputation could not suffer: that
it was beneath you to be solicitous about. And had you not been an
unmanageable man, I should not have been driven to the extremity I now
every hour, as the hour passes, deplore--with this additional reflection
upon myself, that I ought not to have begun, or, having begun, not
continued a correspondence with one who thought it not worth his while
to clear his own character for my sake, or to submit to my father for
his own, in a point wherein every father ought to have an option--

* See Letter VI. of this volume.

Darkness, light; light, darkness; by my soul;--just as you please to
have it. O charmer of my heart! snatching my hand, and pressing it
between both of his, to his lips, in a strange wild way, take me, take
me to yourself: mould me as you please: I am wax in your hands; give me
your own impression; and seal me for ever yours--we were born for each
other!--You to make me happy, and save a soul--I am all error, all
crime. I see what I ought to have done. But do you think, Madam, I can
willingly consent to be sacrificed to a partial re