Stay, I conjure thee, stay thy sacrilegious hand; for the least wound it gives the lord of all my wishes, I’ll double on my breast a thousand fold; stay then, by all thy vows, thy love, and all thy hopes, I swear thou hast this night a full recompense of all thy pains from yielding _Sylvia_; I do conjure thee stay----for when the news arrives thou art no more, this poor, this lost, abandoned heart of mine shall fall a victim to thy cruelty: no, live, my _Philander_, I conjure thee, and receive all thou canst ask, and all that can be given by SYLVIA. * * * * * _To_ PHILANDER. Oh, my charming _Philander_! How very ill have you recompensed my last lost commands? Which were that you should live; and yet at the same moment, while you are reading of the dear obligation, and while my page was waiting your kind return, you desperately exposed your life to the mercy of this innocent rival, betraying unadvisedly at the same time my honour, and the secret of your love, and where to kill or to be killed, had been almost equally unhappy: it was well my page told me you disarmed him in this rencounter; yet you, he says, are wounded, some sacred drops of blood are fallen to the earth and lost, the least of which is precious enough to ransom captive queens: oh! Haste _Philander_, to my arms for cure, I die with fear there may be danger----haste, and let me bathe, the dear, the wounded part in floods of tears, lay to my warm lips, and bind it with my torn hair: oh! _Philander_, I rave with my concern for thee, and am ready to break all laws of decency and duty, and fly without considering, to thy succour, but that I fear to injure thee much more by the discovery, which such an unadvised absence would make. Pray heaven the unlucky adventure reach not _Bellfont; Foscario_ has no reason to proclaim it, and thou art too generous to boast the conquest, and my page was the only witness, and he is as silent and as secret as the grave: but why, _Philander_, was he sent me back without reply? What meant that cruel silence----say, my _Philander_, will you not obey me?----Will you abandon me? Can that dear tongue be perjured? And can you this night disappoint your _Sylvia_? What have I done, oh obstinately cruel, irreconcileable----what, for my first offence? A little poor resentment and no more? A little faint care of my gasping honour, could that displease so much? Besides I had a cause, which you shall see; a letter that would cool love’s hottest fires, and turn it to devotion; by heaven it was such a check----such a surprise----but you yourself shall judge, if after that I could say less, than bid eternally farewell to love--at least to thee--but I recanted soon; one sad dear word, one soft resenting line from thee, gained love the day again, and I despised the censures of the duller world: yes, yes, and I confessed you had overcome, and did this merit no reply? I asked the