.

I had need, thou wilt say, to have some good qualities.

Great faults and great virtues are often found in the same person. In
nothing very bad, but as to women: and did not one of them begin with
me.*

* See Vol. I. Letter XXXI.

We have held, that women have no souls. I am a very Turk in this point,
and willing to believe they have not. And if so, to whom shall I be
accountable for what I do to them? Nay, if souls they have, as there is
no sex in ethereals, nor need of any, what plea can a lady hold of
injuries done her in her lady-state, when there is an end of her
lady-ship?

LETTER XI

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
MONDAY, JUNE 5.

I am now almost in despair of succeeding with this charming frost-piece
by love or gentleness.--A copy of the draughts, as I told thee, has been
sent to Captain Tomlinson; and that by a special messenger. Engrossments
are proceeding with. I have been again at the Commons.--Should in all
probability have procured a license by Mallory's means, had not Mallory's
friend, the proctor, been suddenly sent for to Chestnut, to make an old
lady's will. Pritchard has told me by word of mouth, though my charmer
saw him not, all that was necessary for her to know in the letter my Lord
wrote, which I could not show her: and taken my directions about the
estates to be made over to me on my nuptials.--Yet, with all these
favourable appearances, no conceding moment to be found, no improvable
tenderness to be raised.

But never, I believe, was there so true, so delicate a modesty in the
human mind as in that of this lady. And this has been my security all
along; and, in spite of Miss Howe's advice to her, will be so still;
since, if her delicacy be a fault, she can no more overcome it than I can
my aversion to matrimony. Habit, habit, Jack, seest thou not? may
subject us both to weaknesses. And should she not have charity for me,
as I have for her?

Twice indeed with rapture, which once she called rude, did I salute her;
and each time resenting the freedom, did she retire; though, to do her
justice, she favoured me again with her presence at my first entreaty,
and took no notice of the cause of her withdrawing.

Is it policy to show so open a resentment for innocent liberties, which,
in her situation, she must so soon forgive?

Yet the woman who resents not initiatory freedoms must be lost. For love
is an encroacher. Love never goes backward. Love is always a