h me to give him, and four of his friends, my
company on Monday evening, at a little collation. Miss Martin and Miss
Horton cannot, he says, be there, being engaged in a party of their own,
with two daughters of Colonel Solcombe, and two nieces of Sir Anthony
Holmes, upon an annual occasion. But Mrs. Sinclair will be present, and
she gave him hope of the company of a young lady of very great fortune
and merit (Miss Partington), an heiress to whom Colonel Sinclair, it
seems, in his lifetime was guardian, and who therefore calls Mrs.
Sinclair Mamma.

I desired to be excused. He had laid me, I said, under a most
disagreeable necessity of appearing as a married person, and I would see
as few people as possible who were to think me so.

He would not urge it, he said, if I were much averse: but they were his
select friends; men of birth and fortune, who longed to see me. It was
true, he added, that they, as well as his friend Doleman, believed we
were married: but they thought him under the restrictions that he had
mentioned to the people below. I might be assured, he told me, that his
politeness before them should be carried into the highest degree of
reverence.

When he is set upon any thing, there is no knowing, as I have said
heretofore, what one can do.* But I will not, if I can help it, be made
a show of; especially to men of whose character and principles I have no
good opinion. I am, my dearest friend,

Your ever affectionate
CL. HARLOWE.

* See Letter I. of this volume. See also Vol. II. Letter XX.

***

[Mr. Lovelace, in his next letter, gives an account of his quick return:
of his reasons to the Lady for it: of her displeasure upon it: and of
her urging his absence from the safety she was in from the situation
of the house, except she were to be traced out by his visits.]

I was confoundedly puzzled, says he, on this occasion, and on her
insisting upon the execution of a too-ready offer which I made her go
down to Berks, to bring up my cousin Charlotte to visit and attend her.
I made miserable excuses; and fearing that they would be mortally
resented, as her passion began to rise upon my saying Charlotte was
delicate, which she took strangely wrong, I was obliged to screen myself
behind the most solemn and explicit declarations.

[He then repeats those declarations, to the same effect with the account
she gives of them.]

I began, says he, with an intention to keep my life o