If it be not that, [and yet what power should her guardian angel have
over me?] I don't know what it is that gives a check to my revenge,
whenever I meditate treason against so sovereign a virtue. Conscience is
dead and gone, as I told thee; so it cannot be that. A young conscience
growing up, like the phoenix, from the ashes of the old one, it cannot
be, surely. But if it were, it would be hard, if I could not overlay a
young conscience.

Well, then, it must be LOVE, I fancy. LOVE itself, inspiring love of an
object so adorable--some little attention possibly paid likewise to thy
whining arguments in her favour.

Let LOVE then be allowed to be the moving principle; and the rather, as
LOVE naturally makes the lover loth to disoblige the object of its flame;
and knowing, that to an offence of the meditated kind will be a mortal
offence to her, cannot bear that I should think of giving it.

Let LOVE and me talk together a little on this subject--be it a young
conscience, or love, or thyself, Jack, thou seest that I am for giving
every whiffler audience. But this must be the last debate on this
subject; for is not her fate in a manner at its crisis? And must not my
next step be an irretrievable one, tend it which way it will?


***


And now the debate is over.