She gives me the preference, 'tis true. But what sort of a preference? Why a cold, scrutinizing, very considerative, all wisdom and no passion preference. I do not think there is, upon the face of the whole earth, so nauseous a thing as an over dose of wisdom; mixed up, according to the modern practice, with a quantum sufficit of virture, and a large double handful of the good of the whole. Yet this is the very dose she prescribes for me! Ay, and I must be obliged to swallow it too, let me make what wry faces I please, or my very prudent lady is not so deeply in love but she can recede! And shall I not note down this in my tablets?-- I was sufficiently piqued at the first delay. Why delay, when I offer? Would you have thought, Fairfax, I should have been so very ready with a tender of this my pleasant person, and my dear freedom? And could you moreover have thought it would have been so haughtily rejected?--No--Curse it! Let me do her justice, too. It is not haughtily. She puts as many smiles, and as much sweetness, and plausibility, into her refusal as heart could desire. But refusal it is, nevertheless. I must be further just to her: I must own that I have acted like a lunatic--I am mad at the recollection!-- I told you of the young fellow--Frank Henley--Whom I talked of chastising. Curse on my petulance! He has doubly chastised me since! He has had his full revenge! And in such a generous, noble manner--I am ashamed of myself--He has saved my life, and damn me if I do not feel as if I could never forgive him. There was an end of me and my passions. What business had he to interfere?--He did it too in such an extraordinary style! He appears to have risked more, laboured more, performed more for me than man almost ever did for his dearest and sworn friend. Mine was an act of such ridiculous phrensy that I am half ashamed to tell what it was. I jumped headlong down a declivity, because I knew I was a good swimmer, into a lake; but, like a blockhead, never perceived that I should get stunned by the shelving of the rock, and consequently drowned. And for what, truly? Why to prove to a vapouring, crack-brained French Count, that he was a coward; because perhaps he had not learned to swim! When I look back I have absolutely no patience with myself!-- And then this generous Frank Henley!--After a still more seemingly desperate leap than mine, and bringing me out of the water, dead as a door nail, two hours did he incessantly labour to restore me to life! I, who a few hours before had struck him! And here do I live to relate all this! I think I could have forgiven him any thing sooner than this triumph over me. Yet he claims and forces my admiration. I must own he is a dauntless fellow--Yes, he has a heart--! Damn him! I could kiss him one minute and kill him the next!