, at the hazard of his life, had delivered you
from all these mortifications, is the only person you cannot forgive!

Can't you go on, Sir? You see I have patience to hear you. Can't you go
on, Sir?

I can, Madam, with my sufferings: which I confess ought not to be
mentioned, were I at last to be rewarded in the manner I hoped.

Your sufferings then, if you please, Sir?

Affrontingly forbidden your father's house, after encouragement given,
without any reasons they knew not before to justify the prohibition:
forced upon a rencounter I wished to avoid: the first I ever, so
provoked, wished to avoid. And that, because the wretch was your
brother!

Wretch, Sir!--And my brother!--This could be from no man breathing, but
from him before me!

Pardon me, Madam!--But oh! how unworthy to be your brother!--The quarrel
grafted upon an old one, when at college; he universally known to be the
aggressor; and revived for views equally sordid and injurious both to
yourself and me--giving life to him, who would have taken away mine!

Your generosity THIS, Sir; not your sufferings: a little more of your
sufferings, if you please!--I hope you do not repent, that you did not
murder my brother!

My private life hunted into! My morals decried! Some of the accusers not
unfaulty!

That's an aspersion, Sir!

Spies set upon my conduct! One hired to bribe my own servant's fidelity;
perhaps to have poisoned me at last, if the honest fellow had not--

Facts, Mr. Lovelace!--Do you want facts in the display of your
sufferings?--None of your perhaps's, I beseech you!

Menaces every day, and defiances, put into every one's mouth against me!
Forced to creep about in disguises--and to watch all hours--

And in all weathers, I suppose, Sir--That, I remember, was once your
grievance! In all weathers, Sir!* and all these hardships arising from
yourself, not imposed by me.

* See Letter VI. of this volume.

Like a thief, or an eaves-dropper, proceeded he: and yet neither by
birth nor alliances unworthy of their relation, whatever I may be and
am of their admirable daughter: of whom they, every one of them, are at
least as unworthy!--These, Madam, I call sufferings: justly call so; if
at last I am to be sacrificed to an imperfect reconciliation--imperfect,
I say: for, can you expect to live so much as tolerably under the same
roof, after all that has passed, with that brother and sister?

O Sir, Sir! What sufferings have yours bee