loved
you. Absence cannot lessen such a love as mine: I am sure it cannot.

"I see your difficulties. You have gone too far to recede. If you can
make it easy to your conscience, I will wait with patience my happier
destiny; and I will wish to live (if I can be convinced you wish me
not to die) in order to pray for you, and to be a directress to the
first education of my dearest baby.

"You sigh, dear Sir; repose your beloved face next to my fond heart.
'Tis all your own: and ever shall be, let it, or let it not, be worthy
of the honour in your estimation.

"But yet, my dear Mr. B., if one could as easily, in the prime of
sensual youth, look twenty years backward, what an empty vanity, what
a mere nothing, will be all those grosser satisfactions, that now give
wings of desire to our debased appetites!

"Motives of religion will have their due force upon _your_ mind one
day, I hope; as, blessed be God, they have enabled _me_ to talk to you
on such a touching point (after infinite struggles, I own,) with so
much temper and resignation; and then, my dearest Mr. B., when we come
to that last bed, from which the piety of our friends shall lift us,
but from which we shall never be able to raise ourselves; for, dear
Sir, your Countess, and you, and your poor Pamela, must all come to
this!--we shall find what it is will give us true joy, and enable us
to support the pangs of the dying hour. Think you, my dearest Sir,"
(and I pressed my lips to his forehead, as his head was reclined on
my throbbing bosom,) "that _then_, in that important moment, what
now gives us the greatest pleasure, will have any part in our
consideration, but as it may give us woe or comfort in the reflection?

"But I will not, O best beloved of my soul, afflict you farther. Why
should I thus sadden all your gaudy prospects? I have said enough to
such a heart as yours, if Divine grace touches it. And if not, all I
can say will be of no avail!--I will leave you therefore to that, and
to your own reflections. And after giving you ten thousand thanks for
your indulgent patience with me, I will only beg, that I may set out
in a week for Kent, with my dear Billy; that you will receive one
letter at least, from me, of gratitude and blessings; it shall not be
of upbraidings and exclamations.

"But my child you must not deny me; for I shall haunt, like his
shadow, every place wherein you shall put my Billy, if you should be
so unkind to deny him to me!--And i