‘I have not dared to present them (the letters) because that in my Lady’s letter you wished us much joy, and that we might live happy together, which looked as if you thought it a thing as good as done. I am sure my Lady, of the humour I know her to be, would have gone mad that you should think a business that concerned her so nearly, concluded before it was ever proposed to her; and in the daughter’s you was pleased to tell her of my affections to her, and what I have suffered for her; this is very galant and obliging, but I am afraid they would have misconstrued it, and it might do me prejudice; and then in both, my Lord, you were pleased to take pains to show them almost clearly they had nothing to expect of you, and took from them all hopes which they had, by desiring them to require no more but your consent.’ The question of conditions and settlements being thus approached, Claverhouse hastens to affirm his own absolute disinterestedness. ‘I will assure you,’ he writes, ‘I need nothing to persuade me to take that young lady. I would take her in her smock.’ He is not sure, however, of such unselfish and generous treatment from the other side; and he consequently requests the Earl to hold out hopes to them, though without binding himself in any way. ‘When you say you give them your advice to the match,’ he writes, ‘tell them that they will not repent it, and that doing it at your desire, you will do us any kindness you can, and look on us as persons under your protection, and endeavour to see us thrive—which obliges you to nothing, and yet encourages them.’ This plain suggestion of a course which it would tax a casuist’s ingenuity to distinguish from double-dealing and deception, is hardly creditable to Claverhouse under any circumstances. For his sake it may be hoped that the excuse for it lay in the fact that by this time he had really fallen in love, and was, as he said, anxious to win the young lady for her own sake. If such were not the case, there would be an almost repulsive insincerity in his closing appeal, ‘For the love of God write kindly of me to them. By getting me that young lady you make me happy.’