You but ill judge of my wit, or humour, _Octavio_, when you send me such a present, and such a billet, if you believe I either receive the one, or the other, as you designed: in obedience to me you will no more tell me of your love, and yet at the same time you are breaking your word from one end of the paper to the other. Out of respect to me you will see me no more, and yet are bribing me with presents, believing you have found out the surest way to a woman’s heart. I must needs confess, _Octavio_, there is great eloquence in a pair of bracelets of five thousand crowns: it is an argument to prove your passion, that has more prevailing reason in it, than either _Seneca_ or _Tully_ could have urged; nor can a lover write or speak in any language so significant, and very well to be understood, as in that silent one of presenting. The malicious world has a long time agreed to reproach poor women with cruel, unkind, insensible, and dull; when indeed it is those men that are in fault who want the right way of addressing, the true and secret arts of moving, that sovereign remedy against disdain. It is you alone, my lord, like a young _Columbus_, that have found the direct, unpractised way to that little and so much desired world, the favour of the fair; nor could love himself have pointed his arrows with any thing more successful for his conquest of hearts: but mine, my lord, like _Scæva_’. shield, is already so full of arrows, shot from _Philander_’. eyes, it has no room for any other darts: take back your presents then, my lord, and when you make them next be sure you first consider the receiver: for know, _Octavio_, maids of my quality ought to find themselves secure from addresses of this nature, unless they first invite. You ought to have seen advances in my freedoms, consenting in my eyes, or (that usual vanity of my sex) a thousand little trifling arts of affectation to furnish out a conquest, a forward complaisance to every gaudy coxcomb, to fill my train with amorous cringing captives, this might have justified your pretensions; but on the contrary, my eyes and thoughts, which never strayed from the dear man I love, were always bent to earth when gazed upon by you; and when I did but fear you looked with love, I entertained you with _Philander_’., praise, his wondrous beauty, and his wondrous love, and left nothing untold that might confirm you how much impossible it was, I ever should love again, that I might leave you no room for hope; and since my story has been so unfortunate to alarm the whole world with a conduct so fatal, I made no scruple of telling you with what joy and pride I was undone; if this encourage you, if _Octavio_ have sentiments so meanly poor of me, to think, because I yielded to _Philander_, his hopes should be advanced, I banish him for ever from my sight, and after that disdain the little service he can render the never to be altered SYLVIA.