I was afraid they would have
taken you at your word: and so, but for shame, and for fear of Lovelace,
I dare say they would. You are too noble for them. This, I repeat, is an
offer I would not have made. Let me beg of you, my dear, never to repeat
the temptation to them.

I freely own to you, that their usage of you upon it, and Lovelace's
different treatment of you* in his letter received at the same time,
would have made me his, past redemption. The duce take the man, I was
going to say, for not having so much regard to his character and morals,
as would have entirely justified such a step in a CLARISSA, persecuted
as she is!

* See Letter XVIII.

I wonder not at your appointment with him. I may further touch upon some
part of this subject by-and-by.

Pray--pray--I pray you now, my dearest friend, contrive to send your
Betty Banes to me!--Does the Coventry Act extend to women, know ye?--The
least I will do, shall be, to send her home well soused in and dragged
through our deepest horsepond. I'll engage, if I get her hither, that
she will keep the anniversary of her deliverance as long as she lives.

I wonder not at Lovelace's saucy answer, saucy as it really is.* If he
loves you as he ought, he must be vexed at so great a disappointment.
The man must have been a detestable hypocrite, I think, had he not shown
his vexation. Your expectations of such a christian command of temper
in him, in a disappointment of this nature especially, are too early by
almost half a century in a man of his constitution. But nevertheless I
am very far from blaming you for your resentment.

* See Letter XX.

I shall be all impatience to know how this matter ends between you and
him. But a few inches of brick wall between you so lately; and now such
mountains?--And you think to hold it?--May be so!

You see, you say, that the temper he shewed in his letter was not
natural to him. Wretched creepers and insinuators! Yet when opportunity
serves, as insolent encroachers!--This very Hickman, I make no doubt,
would be as saucy as your Lovelace, if he dared. He has not half the
arrogant bravery of the other, and can better hide his horns; that's
all. But whenever he has the power, depend upon it, he will butt at one
as valiantly as the other.

If ever I should be persuaded to have him, I shall watch how the
obsequious lover goes off; and how the imperative husband comes upon
him; in short, how he ascends, and how I des