"I doubt not but you were amazed, and probably offended, at my quitting the house of your son-in-law without taking leave of you, as you are not a woman likely to think my silence at the moment of parting from you was to be attributed to the tender passion which I had conceived for your beauty and accomplishments. But, madam, if my silence was not attributable to love, so neither was it caused by hate; and I beg leave, hat in hand, and on bended knee, to explain whence my conduct proceeded. In the first place, madam, you had given me a blow, a stunning blow; and after a man has been stunned, he does not soon recover himself sufficiently to know what he is about, and how he ought to behave. In the next place, I endeavoured to remember how the great Earl of Essex behaved when Queen Elizabeth gave him a blow, or in other words a box on the ear (for blow I need not tell a lady of your erudition is the _genus_, and box on the ear the _species_). Now that noble Earl did not return the blow (which I own I was very much inclined to do), but he departed in silence from her presence, I believe; and so _I_ in imitation of _him_ from yours. Methinks I hear you exclaim 'The little lord is mad! I gave him no blow.' Not with your hand, I own; but with your tongue, 'that unruly member,' as St. James so justly calls it; you gave me a tingling blow on the cheek of my mind, which it still feels, and for which perhaps it may be the better. It is this consideration, and the belief that your motives were kind, though your treatment was rough, and that you only meant, like the bear in the fable, to guard me from a slight evil, though you broke my head in doing it; it is this belief, I say, that now throws me thus a suppliant at your feet, and makes me beg of you to excuse all my rudeness, and all my faults, whether caused by imitation of Lord Essex, or my own sinful propensities, and to raise me up to receive not the kiss of peace, for to that I dare not aspire, but to grasp and carry to my heart the white hand tendered to me in token of forgiveness. "I am, madam, with the liveliest esteem, and the deepest respect, your obliged, though stricken servant, "CHARLES FIREBRAND." "Ridiculous person!" said my mother, when she had finished the letter, giving it to me at the same time. When I had read it, I asked her to tell us what she had said to him. "And why," said Pendarves, "does he sign himself Charles Firebrand?" "Oh! thereby hangs a tale," said my mother blushing, "which I, I assure you, shall not tell: therefore ask me no questions. If ever Lord Charles and I meet again, the white hand shall be tendered to him. Nay, perhaps I shall answer his letter."