have the fear of my uncle before me. There is nothing, then, that you
need dread. You have been the occasion of all my misfortunes, you
therefore must be the instrument of my comfort. You cannot but remember
(for lovers cannot forget) with what pleasure I have passed whole days
in hearing your discourse; how, when you were absent, I shut myself from
everyone to write to you; how uneasy I was till my letter had come to
your hands; what artful management it required to engage messengers.
This detail perhaps surprises you, and you are in pain for what may
follow. But I am no longer ashamed that my passion for you had no
bounds, for I have done more than all this.

"I have hated myself that I might love you; I came hither to ruin myself
in a perpetual imprisonment that I might make you live quietly and at
ease. Nothing but virtue, joined to a love perfectly disengaged from the
senses, could have produced such effects. Vice never inspires anything
like this; it is too much enslaved to the body. This was my cruel
uncle's notion; he measured my virtue by the frailty of my sex, and
thought it was the man and not the person I loved. But he has been
guilty to no purpose. I love you more than ever, and so revenge myself
on him. I will still love you with all the tenderness of my soul till
the last moment of my life."

Formerly, she tells him, the man was the least she valued in him. It was
his heart she desired to possess. "You cannot but be entirely persuaded
of this by the extreme unwillingness I showed to marry you, though I
knew that the name of wife was honourable in the world and holy in
religion; yet the name of your mistress had greater charms because it
was more free. The bonds of matrimony, however honourable, still bear
with them a necessary engagement, and I was very unwilling to be
necessitated to love always a man who would perhaps not always love me.