panting bosom; nevertheless he got the courage to reply once again, before he yielded himself a shameful victim to her flattery, and said; ’.h cruel _Sylvia_, is it possible that you can charge the levity on me? Is it I have taken this poor aid, as you are pleased to call it, from you? Oh! rather blame your own unhappy easiness, that after having sworn me faith and love, could violate them both, both where there was no need. It would have better become thy pride and quality, to have resented injuries received, than brought again that scorned, abandoned person (fine as it was and shining still with youth) to his forgetful arms.’ ‘Alas,’ said she, ‘I will not justify my hateful crime: a crime I loathe to think of, it was a fault beyond a prostitution; there might have possibly been new joy in such a sin, but here it was palled and gone--fled to eternity away:--And but for the dear cause I did commit it, there were no expiation for my fault; no penitent tears could wash away my crime.’ ‘Alas,’ said he--’if there were any cause, if there be any possible excuse for such a breach of love, give it my heart; make me believe it, and I may yet live; and though I cannot think thee innocent, to be compelled by any frivolous reason, it would greatly satisfy my longing soul. But, have a care, do not delude me on--for if thou durst persuade me into pardon, and to return to all my native fondness, and then again shouldst play me fast and loose; by heaven--by all my sacred passion to thee, by all that men call holy, I will pursue thee with my utmost hate; forsake thee with my fortune and my heart; and leave thee wretched to the scorning crowd. Pardon these rude expressions of a love that can hardly forgive the words it utters: I blush with shame while I pronounce them true.’ When she replied, ‘May all you have pronounced, and all your injured love can invent, fall on me when I ever more deceive you; believe me now, and but forgive what is past, and trust my love and honour for the future.’ At this she told him, that in the first visit _Philander_ made her, she, using him so reproachfully, and upbraiding him with his inconstancy, made him understand, that he was betrayed by _Octavio_, and that the whole intrigue with _Calista_, confessed by him, was discovered to _Sylvia_; which, he said, put him into so violent a rage against _Octavio_, that he vowed that minute to find him out and kill him. Nor could all the persuasions of reason serve to hinder him; so that she who (as she said) loved _Octavio_ to death, finding so powerful an enemy, as her fears made her fancy _Philander_ was, ready to have snatched from her, in one furious moment, all she adored; she had recourse to all the flattery of love to with-hold him from an attempt so dangerous: and it was with much ado, with all those aids, that he was obliged to stay, which she had forced him to do, to get time to give him notice in the morning for his approaching danger: not that she feared _Octavio_’.