expedient. It is only to prevent a probable mischief, for your own
mind's sake; and for the sake of those who deserve not the least
consideration from me.

What could I say? What could I do?--I verily think, that had he urged me
again, in a proper manner, I should have consented (little satisfied as I
am with him) to give him a meeting to-morrow morning at a more solemn
place than in the parlour below.

But this I resolve, that he shall not have my consent to stay a night
under this roof. He has now given me a stronger reason for this
determination than I had before.


***


Alas! my dear, how vain a thing to say, what we will, or what we will not
do, when we have put ourselves into the power of this sex!--He went down
to the people below, on my desiring to be left to myself; and staid till
their supper was just ready; and then, desiring a moment's audience, as
he called it, he besought my leave to stay that one night, promising to
set out either for Lord M.'s, or for Edgeware, to his friend Belford's,
in the morning, after breakfast. But if I were against it, he said, he
would not stay supper; and would attend me about eight next day--yet he
added, that my denial would have a very particular appearance to the
people below, from what he had told them; and the more, as he had
actually agreed for all the vacant apartments, (indeed only for a month,)
for the reasons he before hinted at: but I need not stay here two days,
if, upon conversing with the widow and her nieces in the morning, I