But whither am I wandering? Pardon these vulgar sentiments. They have escaped my pen. You know that a mere home is my horror. Forgive them.
Adieu.
LETTER XIX
Determined to support my dignity, I dined alone in my room, after the closet-scene; and during this evening, letters of the most heart-rending nature passed between his lordship and me.
To be brief, he has convinced me, that the letter written in his name, to the landlady, was a forgery of her own. The circumventing wretch! I am of opinion, that it ought to be made a hanging matter.
The following is an extract from his and my correspondence. After a most satisfactory disquisition on the various circumstances tending to prove the forgery, he writes thus:
'I have begun twenty letters to you, and have torn them all. I write to you on my knees, and the paper is blistered with my tears; but I have dried it with my sighs.
'Sun, moon, and stars may rise and set as they will. I know not whether it be day, or whether it be night.
'When the girl came with your last note, the idea that your eyes had just been dwelling on her features, on her cap, ribbon, and apron, made her and them so interesting, so dear to me, that, though her features are snubbed, her cap tattered, her ribbon bottle-green (which I hate), and her apron dirty, I should certainly have taken her in my arms, if I had not been the most bashful of men.