O ecstasy!--My heart will burst my breast,
To leap into her bosom!

I knew that the whole stupid family were in a combination to do my
business for me. I told thee that they were all working for me, like so
many ground moles; and still more blind than the moles are said to be,
unknowing that they did so. I myself, the director of their principal
motions; which falling in with the malice of their little hearts, they
took to be all their own.

But did I say my joy was perfect?--O no!--It receives some abatement from
my disgusted bride. For how can I endure to think that I owe more to her
relations' precautions than to her favour for me?--Or even, as far as I
know, to her preference of me to another man?

But let me not indulge this thought. Were I to do so, it might cost my
charmer dear. Let me rejoice, that she has passed the rubicon: that she
cannot return: that, as I have ordered it, the flight will appear to the
implacables to be altogether with her own consent: and that if I doubt
her love, I can put her to trials as mortifying to her niceness, as
glorious to my pride.--For, let me tell thee, dearly as I love her, if I
thought there was but the shadow of a doubt in her mind whether she
preferred me to any man living, I would shew her no mercy.


TUESDAY, DAY-DAWN.

But, on the wings of love, I fly to my charmer, who perhaps by this time
is rising to encourage the tardy dawn. I have not slept a wink of the
hour and half I lay down to invite sleep. It seems to me, that I am not