Is it indeed, _Octavio_, that you believe _Philander_ cold, or would you make that a pretext to the declaration of your own passion? We _French_ ladies are not so nicely tied up to the formalities of virtue, but we can hear love at both ears: and if we receive not the addresses of both, at least we are perhaps vain enough not to be displeased to find we make new conquests. But you have made your attack with so ill conduct, that I shall find force enough without more aids to repulse you. Alas, my lord, did you believe my heart was left unguarded when _Philander_ departed? No, the careful charming lover left a thousand little gods to defend it, of no less power than himself; young deities, who laugh at all your little arts and treacheries, and scorn to resign their empire to any feeble _Cupids_ you can draw up against them: your thick foggy air breeds love too dull and heavy for noble flights, nor can I stoop to them. The _Flemish_ boy wants arrows keen enough for hearts like mine, and is a bungler in his art, too lazy and remiss, rather a heavy _Bacchus_ than a _Cupid_, a bottle sends him to his bed of moss, where he sleeps hard, and never dreams of _Venus_. How poorly have you paid yourself, my lord, (by this pursuit of your discovered love) for all the little friendship you have rendered me! How well you have explained, you can be no more a lover than a friend, if one may judge the first by the last! Had you been thus obstinate in your passion before _Philander_ went, or you had believed me abandoned, I should perhaps have thought that you had loved indeed, because I should have seen you durst, and should have believed it true, because it ran some hazards for me, the resolution of it would have reconciled me then to the temerity of it, and the greatest demonstration you could have given of it, would have been the danger you would have ran and contemned, and the preference of your passion above any other consideration. This, my lord, had been generous and like a lover; but poorly thus to set upon a single woman in the disguise of a friend, in the dark silent melancholy hour of absence from _Philander_, then to surprise me, then to bid me deliver! to pad for hearts! It is not like _Octavio_, _Octavio_ that _Philander_ made his friend, and for whose dear sake, my lord, I will no farther reproach you, but from a goodness, which, I hope, you will merit, I will forgive an offence, which your ill-timing has rendered almost inexcusable, and expect you will for the future consider better how you ought to treat SYLVIA. As soon as she had dismissed the page, she hasted to her business of love, and again read over _Philander_’., letter, and finding still new occasion for fear, she had recourse to pen and paper for a relief of that heart which no other way could find; and after having wiped the tears from her eyes, she writ this following letter. SYLVIA _to_ PHILANDER.