always subdued? And will she not want the
crown of her glory, the proof of her till now all-surpassing excellence,
if I stop short of the ultimate trial?

Now is the end of purposes long over-awed, often suspended, at hand. And
need I go throw the sins of her cursed family into the too-weighty scale?

[Abhorred be force!--be the thoughts of force!--There's no triumph over
the will in force!] This I know I have said.* But would I not have
avoided it, if I could? Have I not tried every other method? And have I
any other resource left me? Can she resent the last outrage more than
she has resented a fainter effort?--And if her resentments run ever so
high, cannot I repair by matrimony?--She will not refuse me, I know,
Jack: the haughty beauty will not refuse me, when her pride of being
corporally inviolate is brought down; when she can tell no tales, but
when, (be her resistance what it will,) even her own sex will suspect a
yielding in resistance; and when that modesty, which may fill her bosom
with resentment, will lock up her speech.

* Vol. IV. Letter XLVIII.

But how know I, that I have not made my own difficulties? Is she not a
woman! What redress lies for a perpetuated evil? Must she not live?
Her piety will secure her life.--And will not time be my friend! What,
in a word, will be her behaviour afterwards?--She cannot fly me!--She
must forgive me--and as I have often said, once forgiven, will be for
ever forgiven.

Why then should this enervating pity unsteel my foolish heart?

It shall not. All these things will I remember; and think of nothing
else, in order to keep up a resolution, which the women about me will
have it I shall be still unable to hold.

I'll teach the dear, charming creature to emulate me in contrivance; I'll
teach her to weave webs and plots against her conqueror! I'll show her,
that in her smuggling schemes she is but a spider compared to me, and
that she has all this time been spinning only a cobweb!

***

What shall we do now! we are immersed in the depth of grief and
apprehension! How ill do women bear disappointment!--Set upon going to
Hampstead, and upon quitting for ever a house she re-entered with
infinite reluctance; what things she intended to take with her ready
packed up, herself on tiptoe to be gone, and I prepared to attend her
thither; she begins to be afraid that she shall not go this night; and in
grief and despair has flung herself into her old a