e
traitor-maker and the traitor.

* Mr. Lovelace accounts for this, Vol. I, Letter XXXV.

'He presses with the utmost earnestness for an interview. He would not
presume, he says, to disobey my last personal commands, that he should
not endeavour to attend me again in the wood-house. But says, he can
give me such reasons for my permitting him to wait upon my father
or uncles, as he hopes will be approved by me: for he cannot help
observing, that it is no more suitable to my own spirit than to his,
that he, a man of fortune and family, should be obliged to pursue such a
clandestine address, as would only become a vile fortune-hunter. But, if
I will give my consent for his visiting me like a man, and a gentleman,
no ill treatment shall provoke him to forfeit his temper.

'Lord M. will accompany him, if I please: or Lady Betty Lawrance will
first make the visit to my mother, or to my aunt Hervey, or even to my
uncles, if I choose it. And such terms shall be offered, as shall have
weight upon them.

'He begs, that I will not deny him making a visit to Mr. Solmes. By
all that's good, he vows, that it shall not be with the least intention
either to hurt or affront him; but only to set before him, calmly and
rationally, the consequences that may possibly flow from so fruitless a
perseverance, as well as the ungenerous folly of it, to a mind as noble
as mine. He repeats his own resolution to attend my pleasure, and Mr.
Morden's arrival and advice, for the reward of his own patience.

'It is impossible, he says, but one of these methods must do.
Presence, he observes, even of a disliked person, takes off the edge of
resentments which absence whets, and makes keen.

'He therefore most earnestly repeats his importunities for the
supplicated interview.' He says, 'He has business of consequence in
London: but cannot stir from the inconvenient spot where he has for
some time resided, in disguises unworthy of himself, until he can be
absolutely certain, that I shall not be prevailed upon, either by force
or otherwise; and until he finds me delivered from the insults of my
brother. Nor ought this to be an indifferent point to one, for whose
sake all the world reports me to be used unworthily. But one remark, he
says, he cannot help making: that did my friends know the little favour
I shew him, and the very great distance I keep him at, they would
have no reason to confine me on his account. And another, that they
themsel