Nay, Sir, if you swear, I must doubt you!--If you yourself think your
WORD insufficient, what reliance can I have on your OATH!--O that this my
experience had not cost me so dear! but were I to love a thousand years,
I would always suspect the veracity of a swearer. Excuse me, Sir; but is
it likely, that he who makes so free with his GOD, will scruple any thing
that may serve his turn with his fellow creature?
This was a most affecting reprimand!
Madam, said I, I have a regard, a regard a gentleman ought to have, to my
word; and whenever I forfeit it to you----
Nay, Sir, don't be angry with me. It is grievous to me to question a
gentleman's veracity. But your friend calls himself a gentleman--you
know not what I have suffered by a gentleman!----And then again she wept.
I would give you, Madam, demonstration, if your grief and your weakness
would permit it, that he has no hand in this barbarous baseness: and that
he resents it as it ought to be resented.
Well, well, Sir, [with quickness,] he will have his account to make up
somewhere else; not to me. I should not be sorry to find him able to
acquit his intention on this occasion. Let him know, Sir, only one
thing, that when you heard me in the bitterness of my spirit, most
vehemently exclaim against the undeserved usage I have met with from him,
that even then, in that passionate moment, I was able to say [and never
did I see such an earnest and affecting exultation of hands and eyes,]
'Give him, good God! repentance and amendment; that I may be the last
poor creature, who shall be ruined by him!--and, in thine own good time,
receive to thy mercy the poor wretch who had none on me!--'
By my soul, I could not speak.--She had not her Bible before her for
nothing.