e are more
evils reserved for me; and whether thou hast entered into a compact with
the grand deceiver, in the person of his horrid agent in this house; and
if the ruin of my soul, that my father's curse may be fulfilled, is to
complete the triumphs of so vile a confederacy?--Answer me!--Say, if thou
hast courage to speak out to her whom thou hast ruined, tell me what
farther I am to suffer from thy barbarity?

She stopped here, and, sighing, turned her sweet face from me, drying up
with her handkerchief those tears which she endeavoured to restrain; and,
when she could not, to conceal from my sight.

As I told thee, I had prepared myself for high passions, raving, flying,
tearing execration; these transient violences, the workings of sudden
grief, and shame, and vengeance, would have set us upon a par with each
other, and quitted scores. These have I been accustomed to; and as
nothing violent is lasting, with these I could have wished to encounter.
But such a majestic composure--seeking me--whom, yet it is plain, by her
attempt to get away, she would have avoided seeking--no Lucretia-like
vengeance upon herself in her thought--yet swallowed up, her whole mind
swallowed up, as I may say, by a grief so heavy, as, in her own words, to
be beyond the power of speech to express--and to be able, discomposed as
she was, to the very morning, to put such a home-question to me, as if
she had penetrated my future view--how could I avoid looking like a fool,
and answering, as before, in broken sentences and confusion?

What--what-a--what has been done--I, I, I--cannot but say--must own--must
confess--hem--hem----is not right--is not what should have been--but-a--
but--but--I am truly--truly--sorry for it--upon my soul I am--and--and--
will do all--do every thing--do what--whatever is incumbent upon me--all
that you--that you--that you shall require, to make you amends!----

O Belford! Belford! whose the triumph now! HER'S, or MINE?

Amends! O thou truly despicable wretch! Then lifting up her eyes--Good
Heaven! who shall pity the creature who could fall by so base a mind!--
Yet--[and then she looked indignantly upon me!] yet, I hate thee not
(base and low-souled as thou art!) half so much as I hate myself, that I
saw thee not sooner in thy proper colours! That I hoped either morality,
gratitude, or humanity, from a libertine, who, to be a libertine, must
have got over and defied all moral sanctions.*

* Her cousin Morde