MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
SUNDAY NIGHT.
This Captain Tomlinson is one of the happiest as well as one of the best
men in the world. What would I give to stand as high in my beloved's
opinion as he does! but yet I am as good a man as he, were I to tell my
own story, and have equal credit given to it. But the devil should have
had him before I had seen him on the account he came upon, had I thought
I should not have answered my principal end in it. I hinted to thee in
my last what that was.
But to the particulars of the conference between my fair-one and me, on
her hasty messages; which I was loth to come to, because she has had an
half triumph over me in it.
After I had attended the Captain down to the very passage, I returned to
the dining-room, and put on a joyful air, on my beloved's entrance into
it--O my dearest creature, said I, let me congratulate you on a prospect
so agreeable to your wishes! And I snatched her hand, and smothered it
with kisses.
I was going on; when interrupting me, You see, Mr. Lovelace, said she,
how you have embarrassed yourself by your obliquities! You see, that you
have not been able to return a direct answer to a plain and honest
question, though upon it depends all the happiness, on the prospect of
which you congratulate me!
You know, my best love, what my prudent, and I will say, my kind motives
were, for giving out that we were married. You see that I have taken no
advantage of it; and that no inconvenience has followed it. You see that
your uncle wants only to be assured from ourselves that it is so--
Not another word on this subject, Mr. Lovelace. I will not only risk,
but I will forfeit, the reconciliation so near my heart, rather than I
will go on to countenance a story so untrue!