mpany.

By her after-observation upon each of you, I shall judge what I may or
may not do to obtain or keep her good opinion; what she will like, or
what not; and so pursue the one or avoid the other, as I see proper. So,
while she is penetrating into your shallow heads, I shall enter her
heart, and know what to bid my own to hope for.

The house is to be taken in three weeks.--All will be over in three
weeks, or bad will be my luck!--Who knows but in three days?--Have I not
carried that great point of making her pass for my wife to the people
below? And that other great one, of fixing myself here night and day?
--What woman ever escaped me, who lodged under one roof with me?--The
house too, THE house; the people--people after my own heart; her
servants, Will. and Dorcas, both my servants.--Three days, did I say!
Pho! Pho! Pho!--three hours!

***

I have carried my third point: but so extremely to the dislike of my
charmer, that I have been threatened, for suffering Miss Partington to be
introduced to her without her leave. Which laid her under a necessity to
deny or comply with the urgent request of so fine a young lady; who had
engaged to honour me at my collation, on condition that my beloved would
be present at it.

To be obliged to appear before my friends as what she was not! She was
for insisting, that I should acquaint the women here with the truth of
the matter; and not go on propagating stories for her to countenance,
making her a sharer in my guilt.

But what points will not perseverance carry? especially when it is
covered over with the face of yielding now, and, Parthian-like, returning
to the charge anon. Do not the sex carry all their points with their men
by the same methods? Have I conversed with them so freely as I have
done, and learnt nothing of them? Didst thou ever know that a woman's
denial of any favour, whether the least or the greatest, that my heart
was set upon, stood her in any stead? The more perverse she, the more
steady I--that is my rule.

But the point thus so much against her will carried, I doubt thou will
see in her more of a sullen than of an obliging charmer: for, when Miss
Partington was withdrawn, 'What was Miss Partington to her? In her
situation she wanted no new acquaintances. And what were my four friends
to her in her present circumstances? She would assure me, if ever again'
--And there she stopped, with a twirl of her hand.

When we meet, I will, i