Now this for some time filled me with such heaviness that I knew not what to do, finding myself as it were stranded between inclination on the one hand and honour on the other. And being thus situated, I did as men are wont to do in such a case, that is to say, I stood wavering between the two difficulties. For I could not altogether resolve to adopt my lord’s offer and enter the French service, cutting myself off entirely from my own country, and designing never to see my father’s face again, lest he should reproach me, and yet I could not make up my mind to retire immediately to Maderas and return to my duty. And while in this pother, that ingenious sophistry, wherewith the devil is wont to bewilder our minds in such cases of temptation, came to the aid of my own inclination. For (so said the tempter to me), your cousin is yet very young, and may reasonably look for a far better settlement than you can offer her. Moreover, she hath not seen you for many years, and her childish fancy for you can’t fail by now to have faded away, while as for any more enduring affection for you that might replace it, how can it have sprung up in your absence? Nay, how do you know that she han’t already fallen in with some gentleman to whom her wishes might incline, were it not for her engagement with you? An’t this more probable, and will you force her to sacrifice her love and herself to a contract made by your father when you were both infants? Thus spake the voice of my own desires, and so prone are we to erect our unruly fancies into virtues, that I waxed exceeding hot and wrathful when I considered the case of the luckless damsel thus bound unwillingly to me, and felt that ’twould be to wrong her grievously did I lack the courage to break the chain that held us. Nor was this all, for it seemed to me that I had also in my keeping the happiness of Madam Heliodora, which I must certainly ruin if I should leave her for to carry out my contract with Dorothy. And thus did I, poor foolish coxcomb! labour to excuse myself and bring salve to my conscience, weighing and judging these matters in my mind as though the lives of all around me had hung upon my nod, and they themselves should be fortunate or miserable according as my high will and pleasure should decree. Never once did I consider that in all this I was wronging not only my poor cousin, whose faithful heart had never turned from me to any other, but also that noble lady, who, if she had loved me even as I hoped, would nevertheless have sacrificed herself and me, without relenting, to the duty that bound me.