ar creature's cheek mantled!--How her eyes sparkled!--How
sweetly acceptable is praise to conscious merit, while it but reproaches
when applied to the undeserving!--What a new, what a gay creation it
makes all at once in a diffident or dispirited heart!

And now, Belford, was it not worth while to be sick? And yet I must tell
thee, that too many pleasanter expedients offer themselves, to make trial
any more of this confounded ipecacuanha.

LETTER III

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE
SATURDAY, MAY 27.

Mr. Lovelace, my dear, has been very ill. Suddenly taken. With a
vomiting of blood in great quantities. Some vessel broken. He
complained of a disorder in his stomach over night. I was the
affected with it, as I am afraid it was occasioned by the violent
contentions between us.--But was I in fault?

How lately did I think I hated him!--But hatred and anger, I see, are but
temporary passions with me. One cannot, my dear, hate people in danger
of death, or who are in distress or affliction. My heart, I find, is not
proof against kindness, and acknowledgements of errors committed.

He took great care to have his illness concealed from me as long as he
could. So tender in the violence of his disorder!--So desirous to make
the best of it!--I wish he had not been ill in my sight. I was too much
affected--every body alarming me with his danger. The poor man, from
such high health, so suddenly taken!--and so unprepared!--

He is gone out in a chair. I advised him to do so. I fear that my
advice was wrong; since quiet in such a disorder must needs be best. We
are apt to be so ready, in cases of emergency, to give our advice,
without judgment, or waiting for it!--I proposed a physician indeed; but
he would not hear of one. I have great honour for the faculty; and the
greater, as I have always observed that those who treat the professors of
the art of healing contemptuously, too generally treat higher
institutions in the same manner.

I am really very uneasy. For I have, I doubt, exposed myself to him, and
to the women below. They indeed will excuse me, as they think us
married. But if he be not generous, I shall have cause to regret this
surprise; which (as I had reason to think myself unaccountably treated by
him) has taught me more than I knew of myself.

'Tis true, I have owned more than once, that I could have liked Mr.
Lovelace above all men. I remember the debates you and I used to have o