oor; since, if I take not money as well as
letters, I shall be suspected.

To serve one's self, and punish a villain at the same time, is serving
public and private. The law was not made for such a man as me. And I
must come at correspondences so disobediently carried on.

But, on second thoughts, if I could find out that the dear creature
carried any of her letters in her pockets, I can get her to a play or to
a concert, and she may have the misfortune to lose her pockets.

But how shall I find this out; since her Dorcas knows no more of her
dressing and undressing than her Lovelace? For she is dressed for the
day before she appears even to her servant. Vilely suspicious! Upon my
soul, Jack, a suspicious temper is a punishable temper. If a woman
suspects a rogue in an honest man, is it not enough to make the honest
man who knows it a rogue?

But, as to her pockets, I think my mind hankers after them, as the less
mischievous attempt. But they cannot hold all the letters I should wish
to see. And yet a woman's pockets are half as deep as she is high. Tied
round the sweet levities, I presume, as ballast-bags, lest the wind, as
they move with full sail, from whale-ribbed canvass, should blow away the
gypsies.

[He then, in apprehension that something is meditating between the two
ladies, or that something may be set on foot to get Miss Harlowe out
of his hands, relates several of his contrivances, and boasts of his
instructions given in writing to Dorcas, and to his servant Will.
Summers; and says, that he has provided against every possible
accident, even to bring her back if she should escape, or in case she
should go abroad, and then refuse to return; and hopes so to manage,
as that, should he make an attempt, whether he succeeded in it or not,
he may have a pretence to detain her.]

He then proceeds as follows:

I have ordered Dorcas to cultivate by all means her lady's favour; to
lament her incapacity as to writing and reading; to shew letters to her
lady, as from pretended country relations; to beg her advice how to
answer them, and to get them answered; and to be always aiming at
scrawling with a pen, lest inky fingers should give suspicion. I have
moreover given the wench an ivory-leafed pocket-book, with a silver
pencil, that she may make memoranda on occasion.

And, let me tell thee, that the lady has already (at Mrs. Sinclair's
motion) removed her clothes out of the tru