"Really!"
"Yes, Miss: but, laws! Miss, do you know he was nothing in his own country, and had nothing but a small principality."
About ten o'clock in the evening, when Miss Hawkes had retired to rest, and I was sitting alone with my book, Fred Lamb was announced to me. I desired William to say that it was rather too late, and that I was shortly going to bed.
He returned to inform me that Mr. Lamb knew I never went to bed before midnight, and therefore begged I would permit him to chat with me for half an hour, so, feeling puzzled how to excuse myself, he was desired to walk upstairs.
He talked to me for more than an hour, of Argyle, Lord Ponsonby, and his own former affection for me. He then became a little more practical than I liked, first taking hold of my hand, and next kissing me by force. I resisted all his attempts with mild firmness. At last he grew desperate, and proceeded to very rough, I may say, brutal violence, against my fixed determination. I was never very strong; but love gave me almost supernatural powers to repel him; and I contrived to pull his hair with such violence, that some of it was really dragged out by the roots.
Fred Lamb was not of a mild or patient temper. In a moment of disappointment and fury at the pain I must have inflicted on him, though it was certainly done only in self-defence, he placed his hand on my throat, saying, while he nearly stopped my breath, and occasioned me almost the pangs of suffocation, that I should not hurt him another instant. He spoke this in a smothered voice, and I did in truth believe that my last moments had arrived. Another instant would have decided the business; but he, thank God, relinquished his grasp at my throat. He is however mistaken if he believes I have ever forgotten the agony of that moment. He arose from the sofa. His rage, I fancy, being converted into shame and fear of what I might tell the world, or, perhaps, he was really shocked at the violence which he had been guilty of. It may easily be imagined that once free from so frightful a grasper of throats, I was not long in obtaining my room upstairs and double-locking my door. Fred Lamb did not attempt to speak to, much less detain me, and in a very few minutes afterwards I heard him leave the house.
"Thank God!" I ejaculated, from the very bottom of my heart; and I began to breathe more freely although I was some time before I recovered my fright.
Fred Lamb was a man of the world, and the next day he no doubt said to himself "this is a bad story, both for my vanity and my character: for I have been very brutal. The best way now will be for me to tell it first to all her friends"; and he accordingly went about making light of the story, as though he had not any reason to be ashamed.
"Do you know," said he, to several of my acquaintances, who afterwards repeated it, "do you know that Harriette is so in love with John Ponsonby, that she was cruel even to me last night! I tried force too; but she resisted me like a little tiger, and pulled my hair!"
"Be it so," thought I, and I never told the story, till now. In fact, I was a good deal afraid of Fred Lamb at that time, and could not but feel provoked at the idea of a young man going about the world, always laughing, and showing off the character of a fine, good-tempered, open-hearted, easy, generous, sailor-like fellow, and who yet could take me from a rich man, to leave me starving at Somers-town as he had done, without once making me the offer of a single shilling, and then return to me, as though all this selfishness had secured him a right over my person, to persecute me with brutal force and lay hold of my throat, so as to put me in fear of my life, because I was not his humble slave any day in any week he happened to return from the Continent: and I am sure Mr. Frederick Lamb cannot assert that, on the day I believed he meant to have been my last, he had ever given me one single guinea or the value of a guinea.