and proposing a pleasure and satisfaction in it, she was of a nature not to lose a pleasure for a little punctilio of honour; and without considering what would be the event of such a folly, she sent her page, though he had been repulsed before, and forbid coming with any messages from his lady. The page found no better success than hitherto he had done: but being with much entreaty brought to _Philander_’. chamber, he found him sitting in his night-gown, to whom addressing himself--he had no sooner named his lady--but _Philander_ bid him be gone, for he would hear nothing from that false woman: the boy would have replied, but he grew more enraged; and reviling her with all the railings of incensed lovers, he puts himself into his closet without speaking any more, or suffering any answer. This message being delivered to the expecting lady, put her into a very great rage--which ended in as deep a concern: her great pride, fortified by her looking-glass, made her highly resent the affront; and she believed it more to the glory of her beauty to have quitted a hundred lovers, than to be abandoned by one. It was this that made her rave and tear, and talk high; and after all, to use her cunning to retrieve what it had been most happy for her should have been for ever lost; and she ought to have blessed the occasion. But her malicious star had designed other fortune for her: she wrote to him several letters, that were sent back sealed: she railed, she upbraided, and then fell to submission. At last, he was persuaded to open one, but returned such answers as gave her no satisfaction, but encouraged her with a little hope that she should draw him on to a reconciliation: between whiles she failed not to send _Octavio_ the kindest, impatient letters in the world, and received the softest replies that the tongue of man could utter, for he could not write yet. At last, _Philander_ having reduced _Sylvia_ to the very brink of despair, and finding, by her passionate importunity, that he could make his peace with her on any terms of advantage to himself, resolved to draw such articles of agreement as should wholly subdue her to him, or to stand it out to the last: the conditions were, that he being a person by no means of a humour to be imposed upon; if he were dear to her, she should give herself entirely to his possession, and quit the very conversation of all those he had but an apprehension would disturb his repose: that she should remove out of the way of his troublesome rivals, and suffer herself to be conducted whither he thought good to carry her. These conditions she liked, all but the going away; she could not tell to what sort of confinement that might amount. He flies off wholly, and denies all treaty upon her least scruple, and will not be asked the explanation of what he has proposed: so that she bends like a slave for a little empire over him; and to purchase the vanity of retaining him, suffers herself to be absolutely undone.