Whither could she go, she asked, to be safe and uninterrupted for the
short remainder of her life; and to avoid being again visited by the
creatures who had insulted her before?
I gave her the solemnest assurances that she should not be invaded in her
new lodgings by any body; and said that I would particularly engage my
honour, that the person who had most offended her should not come near
her, without her own consent.
Your honour, Sir! Are you not that man's friend!
I am not a friend, Madam, to his vile actions to the most excellent of
women.
Do you flatter me, Sir? then you are a MAN.--But Oh, Sir, your friend,
holding her face forward with great earnestness, your barbarous friend,
what has he not to answer for!
There she stopt: her heart full; and putting her hand over her eyes and
forehead, the tears tricked through her fingers: resenting thy barbarity,
it seemed, as Caesar did the stab from his distinguished Brutus!
Though she was so very much disordered, I thought I would not lose this
opportunity to assert your innocence of this villanous arrest.
There is no defending the unhappy man in any of his vile actions by you,
Madam; but of this last outrage, by all that's good and sacred, he is
innocent.
O wretches; what a sex is your's!--Have you all one dialect? good and
sacred!--If, Sir, you can find an oath, or a vow, or an adjuration, that
my ears have not been twenty times a day wounded with, then speak it, and
I may again believe a MAN.
I was excessively touched at these words, knowing thy baseness, and the
reason she had for them.
But say you, Sir, for I would not, methinks, have the wretch capable of
this sordid baseness!--Say you, that he is innocent of this last
wickedness? can you truly say that he is?