but either fear to lose _Octavio_ by clear confession, or to run herself into farther error by denying the matter of fact, stops her words, and she only blushes and sighs at what she dares not tell; and if by chance their speaking eyes meet, they would both decline them hastily again, as afraid to find there what their language could not confess. Sometimes he would press her hand and sigh.--’Ah, _Sylvia_, you have undone my quiet’. to which she would return no answer, but sigh, and now rising from the couch, she walked about the chamber as sad and silent as death, attending when he should have advanced in speaking to her, though she dreads the voice she wishes to hear, and he waits for her reply, though the mouth that he adores should deliver poison and daggers to his heart. While thus they remained in the most silent and sad entertainment (that ever was between lovers that had so much to say) the page, which _Octavio_ only trusts to wait, brought him this letter. BRILLIARD _to_ OCTAVIO. _My Lord_, I am too sensible of my many high offences to your lordship, and have as much penitence for my sin committed towards you as it is possible to conceive; but when I implore a pardon from a lover, who by his own passion may guess at the violent effects of my despairing flame, I am yet so vain to hope it. _Antonet_ gave me the intelligence of your design, and raised me up to a madness that hurried me to that barbarity against your unspotted honour. I own the baseness of the fact, but lovers are not, my lord, always guided by rules of justice and reason; or, if I had, I should have killed the fair adulteress that drew you to your undoing, and who merits more your hate than your regard; and who having first violated her marriage-vow to me with _Philander_, would sacrifice us both to you, and at the same time betray you to a marriage that cannot but prove fatal to you, as it is most unlawful in her; so that, my lord, if I have injured you, I have at the same time saved you from a sin and ruin, and humbly implore that you will suffer the good I have rendered you in the last, to atone for the ill I did you in the first. If I have accused you of a design against the State, it was to save you from that of the too subtle and too charming _Sylvia_, which none but myself could have snatched you from. It is true, I might have acted something more worthy of my birth and education; but, my lord, I knew the power of _Sylvia_; and if I should have sent you the knowledge of this, when I sent the warrant for the security of your person, the haughty creature would have prevailed above all my truths with the eloquence of love, and you had yielded and been betrayed worse by her, than by the most ungenerous measures I took to prevent it. Suffer this reason, my lord, to plead for me in that heart where _Sylvia_ reigns, and shews how powerful she is every where. Pardon all the faults of a most unfortunate man undone by love, and by your own, guess what his