'Monsieur Colbrand, my trusty Swiss, will obey you without reserve, if
my other servants refuse.

'As for her denying that she encouraged his declaration, I believe
it not. It is certain the speaking picture, with all that pretended
innocence and bashfulness, would have run away with him. Yes, she would
run away with a fellow that she had been acquainted with (and that not
intimately, if you were as careful as you ought to be) but a few days;
at a time when she had the strongest assurances of my honour to her.

'Well, I think, I now hate her perfectly: and though I will do nothing
to her myself, yet I can bear, for the sake of my revenge, and my
injured honour and slighted love, to see any thing, even what she most
fears, be done to her; and then she may be turned loose to her evil
destiny, and echo to the woods and groves her piteous lamentations for
the loss of her fantastical innocence, which the romantic ideot makes
such a work about. I shall go to London, with my sister Davers; and the
moment I can disengage myself, which, perhaps, may be in three weeks
from this time, I will be with you, and decide her fate, and put an end
to your trouble. Mean time be doubly careful; for this innocent, as I
have warned you, is full of contrivances. I am 'Your friend.'

I had but just read this dreadful letter through, when Mrs. Jewkes
came up in a great fright, guessing at the mistake, and that I had her
letter, and she found me with it open in my hand, just sinking away.
What business, said she, had you to read my letter? and snatched it from
me. You see, said she, looking upon it, it says Mrs. Jewkes, at top:
You ought, in manners, to have read no further. O add not, said I, to my
afflictions! I shall be soon out of all your ways! This is too much! too
much! I never can support this--and threw myself upon the couch, in my
closet, and wept most bitterly. She read it in the next room, and came
in again afterwards. Why, this, said she, is a sad letter indeed: I am
sorry for it: But I feared you would carry your niceties too far!--Leave
me, leave me, Mrs. Jewkes, said I, for a while: I cannot speak nor
talk.--Poor heart! said she; Well, I'll come up again presently, and
hope to find you better. But here, take your own letter; I wish you
well; but this is a sad mistake! And so she put down by me that which
was intended for me: But I have no spirit to read it at present. O man!
man! hard-hearted, cruel man! what mischiefs art