excess of self-love. Where a Lovelace so superb condescended to make
overtures, a Clarissa so tasteless as to decline them deserved and
experienced his contempt. Besides, steadfast and prolonged pursuit of
any object, however important and attractive, was alien to the levity and
fickleness of his temper. But in this instance he had other motives than
those on the surface for unusual perseverance.

A man like Jasper Losely never reposes implicit confidence in any one.
He is garrulous, indiscreet; lets out much that Machiavel would have
advised him not to disclose: but he invariably has nooks and corners in
his mind which he keeps to himself. Jasper did not confide to his
adopted mother his designs upon his intended bride. But she knew them
through Poole, to whom he was more frank; and when she saw him looking
over her select and severe library, taking therefrom the "Polite Letter-
Writer" and the "Elegant Extracts," Mrs. Crane divined at once that
Jasper Losely was meditating the effect of epistolary seduction upon the
widow of Gloucester Place.

Jasper did not write a bad love-letter in the florid style. He had at
his command, in especial, certain poetical quotations, the effect of
which repeated experience had assured him to be as potent upon the female
breast as the incantations or carmina of the ancient sorcery. The
following in particular,

"Had I a heart for falsehood framed,
I neer could injure you."

Another, generally to be applied when confessing that his career had been
interestingly wild, and would, if pity were denied him, be pathetically
short,