Come to my apartments. With pure hearts and hands, we will plight our fervent unspotted faith. Say I am your's, and you are mine, and sorrow and jealousy will vanish as a mist. You shall go the transported confiding husband. LETTER XVI FROM ARTHUR MURDEN TO CLEMENT MONTGOMERY SIR Your letters, one and all, I suppose, have come in safety to my hands. In your last you are urgent for my answer. It is this. Although you, Mr. Montgomery, amuse your spleen or your fancy, by talking of my _cold killing indifference_, I have such _feelings_ as tell me your conduct is neither that of a lover nor a man. Farewel, Sir. I renounce your friendship. I desire only to remain a stranger to your name and remembrance. ARTHUR MURDEN LETTER XVII FROM ARTHUR MURDEN TO CLEMENT MONTGOMERY Montgomery Call me mad, possessed. Curse me, reproach me, do anything, only that when you have had your revenge, forget such a letter as I wrote you last ever had existence. Say it was strange, I say so too. Call it insolent, I will confess it; unaccountable, I still join with you. It was one of the sudden whirls of this vertigo brain of mine, almost as incomprehensible to myself as to you. I have no excuses to offer, for the fit may come again upon me. Promise has no power with me, I am the creature of impulse. Alas! Alas! that reason and consistency should thus become the shuttlecocks of fancy! Now taking it for granted, that I gain your pardon, next have I a long account to settle with myself. I would not partake of happiness of a common mould; lay it before me, and I disdained the petty prize, stalked proudly over it, and stalked on, prying, and watching, to seize hold on some hidden blessing, that reserved itself to be the reward of a deserving venturous hero like myself--Oh! I have embraced a cloud, and the tormenting wheel rolls round with a rapid motion! I know I am talking algebra to you, and if you take me for a companion, you must even be content to travel on in the dark. It is so, but why it is, I think your best discernment will not aid you to discover. Enquiry is useless, expostulation, a farce. Be patient, and forgive me this, and other transgressions, for I tell you, Montgomery, you have a potent revenge. There is little probability that you and I should meet each other, as London will be the scene of your action, while I condemn myself to wander north and south, in search of a few grains of that content I so wantonly gave the winds to scatter. I must have room to vent my suffocating thoughts. I cannot be pinioned in the crowd; and I would rather seek converse with myself in a charnel house, than enter the brightest circles of fashion. I hate to be the wonder of fools. Already is my reputation raised, and I have now just sense enough in madness to play my antics alone. Driven by winds and storms, I may seek an occasional shelter at Barlowe Hall. Whither, if you are so disposed, you may direct to ARTHUR MURDEN