carried out neck-and-heels,
Thomasine thought fit to walk out after him.

Charming consequences of keeping; the state we have been so fond of
extolling!--Whatever it may be thought of in strong health, sickness and
declining spirits in the keeper will bring him to see the difference.

She should soon have him, she told a confidant, in the space of six foot
by five; meaning his bed: and then she would let nobody come near him but
whom she pleased. This hostler-fellow, I suppose, would then have been
his physician; his will ready made for him; and widows' weeds probably
ready provided; who knows, but she to appear in them in his own sight? as
once I knew an instance in a wicked wife; insulting a husband she hated,
when she thought him past recovery: though it gave the man such spirits,
and such a turn, that he got over it, and lived to see her in her coffin,
dressed out in the very weeds she had insulted him in.

So much, for the present, for Belton and his Thomasine.

***

I begin to pity thee heartily, now I see thee in earnest in the fruitless
love thou expressest to this angel of a woman; and the rather, as, say
what thou wilt, it is impossible she should get over her illness, and her
friends' implacableness, of which she has had fresh instances.

I hope thou art not indeed displeased with the extracts I have made from
thy letters for her. The letting her know the justice thou hast done to
her virtue in them, is so much in favour of thy ingenuousness, (a
quality, let me repeat, that gives thee a superiority over common
libertines,) that I think in my heart I was right; though to any other
woman, and to one who had not known the worst of thee that she could
know, it might have been wrong.

If the end will justify the means, it is plain, that I have done well
with regard to ye both; since I have made her easier, and thee appear in
a better light to her, than otherwise thou wouldst have done.

But if, nevertheless, thou art dissatisfied with my having obliged her in
a point, which I acknowledge to be delicate, let us canvas this matter at
our first meeting: and then I will show thee what the extracts were, and
what connections I gave them in thy favour.

But surely thou dost not pretend to say what I shall, or shall not do, as
to the executorship.

I am my own man, I hope. I think thou shouldst be glad to have the
justification of her memory left to one, who, at the same time, thou
mayest be assured, w