and calls her by such tender names? Would a girl, modest as simple,
above seventeen, be set a-singing at the pleasure of such a man as
that? a stranger, and professedly in disguise!--Would her father and
grandmother, if honest people, and careful of their simple girl, permit
such freedoms?

Keep his friend at a distance from her!--To be sure his designs are
villainous, if they have not been already effected.

Warn, my dear, if not too late, the unthinking father, of his child's
danger. There cannot be a father in the world, who would sell his
child's virtue. Nor mother!--The poor thing!

I long to hear the result of your intelligence. You shall see the simple
creature, you tell me.--Let me know what sort of a girl she is.--A sweet
pretty girl! you say. A sweet pretty girl, my dear!--They are sweet
pretty words from your pen. But are they yours or his of her?--If she be
so simple, if she have ease and nature in her manner, in her speech, and
warbles prettily her wild notes, why, such a girl as that must
engage such a profligate wretch, (as now indeed I doubt this man is,)
accustomed, perhaps, to town women, and their confident ways.--Must
deeply and for a long season engage him: since perhaps when her
innocence is departed, she will endeavour by art to supply the loss of
the natural charms which now engage him.

Fine hopes of such a wretch's reformation! I would not, my dear, for the
world, have any thing to say--but I need not make resolutions. I have
not opened, nor will I open, his letter.--A sycophant creature!--With
his hoarsenesses--got perhaps by a midnight revel, singing to his wild
note singer, and only increased in the coppice!

To be already on a footing!--In his esteem, I mean: for myself, I
despise him. I hate myself almost for writing so much about him, and of
such a simpleton as this sweet pretty girl as you call her: but no one
can be either sweet or pretty, that is not modest, that is not virtuous.

And now, my dear, I will tell you how I came to put you upon this
inquiry.

This vile Joseph Leman had given a hint to Betty, and she to me, as if
Lovelace would be found out to be a very bad man, at a place where he
had been lately seen in disguise. But he would see further, he said,
before he told her more; and she promised secrecy, in hope to get at
further intelligence. I thought it could be no harm, to get you to
inform yourself, and me, of what could be gathered.* And now I see, his
enemies are