I know, my lovely _Sylvia_, I am accused of a thousand barbarities for unkindly detaining your lover, who long ere this ought to have thrown himself at your feet, imploring a thousand pardons for his tedious six months’ absence, though the affliction of it, is all my own, and I am afraid all the punishment; but when, my dearest _Sylvia_, I reflect again, it is in order to our future tranquillity, I depend on your love and reason for my excuse. I know my absence has procured me a thousand rivals, and you as many adorers, and fear _Philander_ appears grown old in love, and worn out with sorrow and care, unfit for the soft play of the young and delicate _Sylvia_; new lovers have new vows and new presents, and your fickle sex stoop to the lavish prostrate. Ill luck--unkind fate has rifled me, and of a shining fortune left me even to the charity of a stingy world; and I have now no compliment to maintain the esteem in so great a soul as that of _Sylvia_, but that old repeated one, of telling her my dull, my trifling heart is still her own: but, oh! I want the presenting eloquence that so persuades and charms the fair, and am reduced to that fatal torment of a generous mind, rather to ask and take, than to bestow. Yet out of my contemptible stock, I have sent my _Sylvia_ something towards that dangerous, unavoidable hour, which will declare me, however, a happy father of what my _Sylvia_ bears about her; it is a bill for a thousand pattacoons. I am at present under an easy restraint about a little dispute between a man of quality here and myself; I had also been at _Brussels_ to have provided all things for your coming illness, but every day expect my liberty, and then without delay I will take post, and bring _Philander_ to your arms. I have news that _Cesario_ is arrived at _Brussels_. I am at present a stranger to all that passes, and having a double obligation to haste, you need not fear but I shall do so. This letter raised in her a different sentiment, from that of the story of his misfortune; and that taught her to know, that this he had writ to her was all false, and dissembled; which made her, in concluding the letter, cry out with a vehement scorn and indignation.--’Oh how I hate thee, traitor! who hast the impudence to continue thus to impose upon me, as if I wanted common sense to see thy baseness: for what can be more base and cowardly than lies, that poor plebeian shift, condemned by men of honour or of wit.’