This repeated charge very justly alarmed my morality, and I very
seriously began a refutation. But in vain. I might say what I would;
she could see very plainly I was a prodigious rake, and nothing could
convince her to the contrary. Though she had heard that your greatest
rakes make the best husbands. Perhaps it might be true, but she did
not think she could be persuaded to make the venture. She did not know
what might happen, to be sure; though she really did not think she
could. She could not conceive how it was, but some how or another she
always found something agreeable about rakes. It was a great pity they
should be rakes, but she verily believed the women loved them, and
encouraged them in their seducing arts. For her part, she would keep
her fingers out of the fire as long as she could: but, if it were her
destiny to love a rake, what could she do? Nobody could help being in
love, and it would be very hard indeed to call what one cannot help a
crime.

In this key would she continue, without let or delay, whenever she
had me to herself, till some accident came to my relief: for the
philosophy of Miss Eliza, on the subjects of love and rakishness, was
exhaustless; and though it could not always convince, it could puzzle.
I often knew not how to behave, such a warfare did she sometimes
kindle between inclination and morality. My resource was in silence;
hers in talking. Notwithstanding her very great prudence, I suspect
there might have been danger, had I not been guarded by the three fold
shield of an unfashionable sense of moral right, strong aspirings
after clerical purity, and the unfaded remembrance of the lovely
chaste Olivia.