formation
his stalking-horse, &c.

He then acquaints his friend with what passed between him
and the Lady, in relation to his advices from Harlowe-
place, and to his proposal about lodgings, pretty much to
the same purpose as in her preceding Letter.

When he cones to mention his proposal of the Windsor
lodgings, thus heexpresses himself:

Now, Belford, can it enter into thy leaden head, what I meant by this
proposal!--I know it cannot. And so I'll tell thee.

To leave her for a day or two, with a view to serve her by my absence,
would, as I thought, look like a confiding in her favour. I could not
think of leaving her, thou knowest, while I had reason to believe her
friends would pursue us; and I began to apprehend that she would suspect
that I made a pretence of that intentional pursuit to keep about her and
with her. But now that they had declared against it, and that they would
not receive her if she went back, (a declaration she had better hear
first from me, than from Miss Howe, or any other,) what should hinder me
from giving her this mark of my obedience; especially as I could leave
Will, who is a clever fellow, and can do any thing but write and spell,
and Lord M.'s Jonas (not as guards, to be sure, but as attendants only);
the latter to be dispatched to me occasionally by the former, whom I
could acquaint with my motions?

Then I wanted to inform myself, why I had not congratulatory letters
from Lady Sarah and Lady Betty, and from my cousins Montague, to whom I
had written, glorying in my beloved's escape; which letters, if properly
worded, might be made necessary to shew her as matters proceed.

As to Windsor, I had no design to carry her particularly thither: but
somewhere it was proper to name, as she condescended to ask my advice
about it. London, I durst not; but very cautiously; and so as to make it
her own option: for I must tell thee, that there is such a perverseness
in the sex, that when they ask your advice, they do it only to know your
opinion, that they may oppose it; though, had not the thing in question
been your choice, perhaps it had been theirs.

I could easily give reasons against Windsor, after I had pretended to
be there; and this would have looked the better, as it was a place of
my own nomination; and shewn her that I had no fixed scheme. Never was
there in woman such a sagacious, such an all-alive apprehension, as in
this. Yet it is a gri