"I will make any settlement on you you may please to ask of me," said Meyler, "if you will but leave Worcester and live with me."
"You have told me this at least fifty times already," I replied, "and you really may spare yourself any further useless trouble. I must follow the dictates of my heart whatever may become of me. There will be a consolation in a clear conscience, and, in leaving Worcester, I should feel that I deserved the worst that could happen to me, and both your lives might be lost in a duel: or, if Worcester was killed abroad, having first cursed me for my conduct, I should never get over it: else, you know I am full half in love with you, and Worcester knows well I was never one bit in love with him."
"Then if you do love me," said Meyler, "I will hold myself disengaged, and wait for my chance of you during the whole of that year you have promised to wait for Worcester's return."
I laughed at Meyler's promises, assuring him I had not the least faith in them.
Worcester was eternally writing to me, and nothing could be more romantically tender than his letters. No power on earth could tempt him, or should ever induce him, while he breathed, to even bestow a single kiss on any woman's lips but mine, &c.; then followed very excellent descriptions of battles, with a long account of Parker, for Fanny.
These very kind letters at length determined me to leave London.
The last evening I passed in town was truly a dull one to me. "No doubt," thought I, "this gay young volatile creature, surrounded as he is by temptation, will forget me in less than a month! I am unprovided for, and am leaving every friend on earth, to wander about for a lone lodging in a dismal village. It cannot be helped! Worcester's mind must be set at rest; because there was nothing he was not ready to do for me."
"Where is there a village?" said I to Luttrell, who informed me that there was a village called Charmouth, within thirty miles of Exeter, which, as he once passed through it, had struck him as particularly picturesque.
"That will do," said I, sick of the dry, dull subject; and I took a place for myself and my femme de chambre in the Exeter mail without further delay.
Meyler was half cooled, as soon as I was quite determined to leave London; but still he was very melancholy.