ded,) as I shall or shall
not be your hindrance. Take that as a pledge; or in part of payment--
offering her a thirty pound bank note.

She declined taking it; desiring she might consult the lady first;
adding, that she doubted not my honour; and that she would not let her
apartments to any other person, whom she knew not something of, while I
and the lady were here.

The Lady! The Lady! from both women's mouth's continually (which still
implied a doubt in their hearts): and not Your Spouse, and Your Lady,
Sir.

I never met with such women, thought I:--so thoroughly convinced but this
moment, yet already doubting--I am afraid I have a couple of skeptics to
deal with.

I knew no reason, I said, for my wife to object to my lodging in the same
house with her here, any more than in town, at Mrs. Sinclair's. But were
she to make such objection, I would not quit possession since it was not
unlikely that the same freakish disorder which brought her to Hampstead,
might carry her absolutely out of my knowledge.

They both seemed embarrassed; and looked upon one another; yet with such
an air, as if they thought there was reason in what I said. And I
declared myself her boarder, as well as lodger; and dinner-time
approaching, was not denied to be the former.

LETTER XXV

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.

I thought it was now high time to turn my whole mind to my beloved; who
had had full leisure to weigh the contents of the letters I had left with
her.

I therefore requested Mrs. Moore to step in, and desire to know whether
she would be pleased to admit me to attend her in her apartment, on
occasion of the letters I had left with her; or whether she would favour
me with her company in the dining-room?

Mrs. Moore desired Miss Rawlins to accompany her in to the lady. They
tapped at the door, and were both admitted.

I cannot but stop here for one minute to remark, though against myself,
upon that security which innocence gives, that nevertheless had better
have in it a greater mixture of the serpent with the dove. For here,
heedless of all I could say behind her back, because she was satisfied
with her own worthiness, she permitted me to go on with my own story,
without interruption, to persons as great strangers to her as me; and
who, as strangers to both, might be supposed to lean to the side most
injured; and that, as I managed it, was to mine. A dear, silly soul,
thought I, at the time, to depend