My plain-dealing with Mr. Lovelace, on seeing him again, and the free
dislike I expressed to his ways, his manners, and his contrivances, as
well as to his speeches, have obliged him to recollect himself a little.
He will have it, that the menaces which he threw out just now against my
brother and Mr. Solmes, are only the effect of an unmeaning pleasantry.
He has too great a stake in his country, he says, to be guilty of such
enterprises as should lay him under a necessity of quitting it for ever.
Twenty things, particularly, he says, he has suffered Joseph Leman to
tell him of, that were not, and could not be true, in order to make
himself formidable in some people's eyes, and this purely with a view
to prevent mischief. He is unhappy, as far as he knows, in a quick
invention; in hitting readily upon expedients; and many things are
reported of him which he never said, and many which he never did, and
others which he has only talked of, (as just now,) and which he has
forgot as soon as the words have passed his lips.
This may be so, in part, my dear. No one man so young could be so
wicked as he has been reported to be. But such a man at the head of
such wretches as he is said to have at his beck, all men of fortune and
fearlessness, and capable of such enterprises as I have unhappily found
him capable of, what is not to be apprehended from him!
His carelessness about his character is one of his excuses: a very
bad one. What hope can a woman have of a man who values not his own
reputation?--These gay wretches may, in mixed conversation, divert for
an hour, or so: but the man of probity, the man of virtue, is the man
that is to be the partner for life. What woman, who could help it, would
submit it to the courtesy of a wretch, who avows a disregard to all
moral sanctions, whether he will perform his part of the matrimonial
obligation, and treat her with tolerable politeness?
With these notions, and with these reflections, to be thrown upon such a
man myself!--Would to Heaven--But what avail wishes now?--To whom can I
fly, if I would fly from him?