ore her.

She looked steadily upon me for a moment, and with her other hand, not
withdrawing that I held, pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket; and
by a twinkling motion urged forward a tear or two, which having arisen in
each sweet eye, it was plain by that motion she would rather have
dissipated: but answered me only with a sigh, and an averted face.

I urged her to speak; to look up at me; to bless me with an eye more
favourable.

I had reason, she told me, for my complaint of her indifference. She saw
nothing in my mind that was generous. I was not a man to be obliged or
favoured. My strange behaviour to her since Saturday night, for no cause
at all that she knew of, convinced her of this. Whatever hopes she had
conceived of me were utterly dissipated: all my ways were disgustful to
her.

This cut me to the heart. The guilty, I believe, in every case, less
patiently bear the detecting truth, than the innocent do the degrading
falshood.

I bespoke her patience, while I took the liberty to account for this
change on my part.--I re-acknowledged the pride of my heart, which could
not bear the thought of that want of preference in the heart of a lady
whom I hoped to call mine, which she had always manifested. Marriage, I
said, was a state that was not to be entered upon with indifference on
either side.

It is insolence, interrupted she, it is a presumption, Sir, to expect
tokens of value, without resolving to deserve them. You have no whining
creature before you, Mr. Lovelace, overcome by weak motives, to love
where there is no merit. Miss Howe can tell you, Sir, that I never loved
the faults of my friend; nor ever wished her to love me for mine. It was
a rule with us not to spare each other. And would a man who has nothing
but faults (for pray, Sir, what are your virtues?) expect that I should
show a value for him? Indeed, if I did, I should not deserve even his
value; but ought to be despised by him.

Well have you, Madam, kept up to this noble manner of thinking. You are
in no danger of being despised for any marks of tenderness or favour
shown to the man before you. You have been perhaps, you'll think,
laudably studious of making and taking occasions to declare, that it was
far from being owing to your choice, that you had any thoughts of me. My
whole soul, Madam, in all its errors, in all its wishes, in all its
views, had been laid open and naked before you, had I been encouraged by
such