self, after a better night than I expected,
lively and clear; and hope to give a proof that I do, in the continuation
of my letter, which I will pursue as currently as if I had not left off.

I am glad that you so considerately gave my cousin Morden favourable
impressions of Mr. Belford; since, otherwise, some misunderstanding might
have happened between them: for although I hope this Mr. Belford is an
altered man, and in time will be a reformed one, yet is he one of those
high spirits that has been accustomed to resent imaginary indignities to
himself, when, I believe, he has not been studious to avoid giving real
offences to others; men of this cast acting as if they thought all the
world was made to bar with them, and they with nobody in it.

Mr. Lovelace, you tell me, thought fit to intrust my cousin with the copy
of his letter of penitence to me, and with my answer to it, rejecting him
and his suit: and Mr. Belford, moreover, acquaints me, how much concerned
Mr. Lovelace is for his baseness, and how freely he accused himself to my
cousin. This shows, that the true bravery of spirit is to be above doing
a vile action; and that nothing subjects the human mind to so much
meanness, as the consciousness of having done wilful wrong to our fellow
creatures. How low, how sordid, are the submissions which elaborate
baseness compels! that that wretch could treat me as he did, and then
could so poorly creep to me for forgiveness of crimes so wilful, so
black, and so premeditated! how my soul despised him for his meanness on
a certain occasion, of which you will one day be informed!* and him whose
actions one's heart despises, it is far from being difficult to reject,
had one ever so partially favoured him once.

* Meaning his meditated second violence (See Vol. VI. Letter XXXVI.) and
his succeeding letters to her, supplicating for her pardon.

Yet am I glad this violent spirit can thus creep; that, like a poisonous
serpent, he can thus coil himself, and hide his head in his own narrow
circlets; because this stooping, this abasement, gives me hope that no
farther mischief will ensue.

All my apprehension is, what may happen when I am gone; lest then my
cousin, or any other of my family, should endeavour to avenge me, and
risk their own more precious lives on that account.

If that part of Cain's curse were Mr. Lovelace's, to be a fugitive and
vagabond in the earth; that is to say, if it meant no more harm to him
tha