"If you can once lay hold of him, and kif him some of your pills and potions, he would soon be clad to gif up the coast."
"What, then, (said De Clavering) you think me more dangerous than love?—That little, subtle, and revengeful god will one day bring you upon your knees before his shrine for the affront put upon his all subduing influence."
"He had petter let me alone, (replied the Cambrian,) I am not so plind as his tivine highness, and will nefer worship any cot put the crate Cot of heaven. Eteliza has taught you petter, De Willows: That girl's tell-tale eyes petray that luf has been pusy with more than one person."
De Clavering laughed at this unexpected attack upon his friend, who felt a painful consciousness that Camelford had more reason for his observation that he wished, the partiality of the artless Edeliza being too visible to be longer mistaken. On his own part, he had, from the first seeing Madeline, cherished an increasing affection for her, while her uniform and unaffected coldness, with the preference she had shewn to another, too well convinced him he had nothing to hope; neither could he any longer affect to be blind to the mutual attachment which subsisted between her and his friend Edwin, the latter having made no attempt to deny it; but, being satisfied of the honour of De Willows, had in part entrusted him with the wishes he determined to encourage, notwithstanding the insurmountable, obstacles that appeared to preclude the most distant ray of hope.
"That same love, of which you are thinking and talking, (said De Clavering,) has so many devilifications in its train, I am determined to have nothing to do with it, till it becomes more rational, and can be reduced into a regular system, by which we poor short-sighted mortals may find directions how to act, without exposing ourselves to ridicule or disappointment. I am inclined to think I shall one day or other be tempted to marry, but it shall be to a woman who will take care to keep such ear-wig sort of fellows as you at a proper distance.—You tell fine tales, are all smoothness and deceit,—like a snail can give a gloss to the path you crawl over, and then leave such traces of your deceptive and invidious progress as cannot be concealed. Let the subject of your next satire, De Willows, be the male flirt,—an animal more dangerous than a tyger."
"Why so?" asked De Willows, determined not to apply the hint which he well knew was designed for him.
"Can there (said De Clavering) be found a character more deserving satire?—a thing that borrows the form of man to disgrace the name,—an adept in mean stratagems and mischievous deceives.—insensible to the admonitions of conscience,—well versed in all the practices of refined cruelty,—working like a mole in the dark, in order more effectually to ensnare the youthful heart of unsuspecting innocence, and that merely to gratify the vicious vanity of the moment; and, after he had sacrificed the health, happiness, and perhaps the life, of a young woman, who, by her tender nature, he has beguiled of peace, he laughs at her credulous folly, and boldly declares he had never any thought of making her his wife. That there are such men, who, under the sacred semblance of honour, can act thus despicably, I have, in the form of one once dear to me as life, unhappily experienced, and from that moment I became the friend and champion of the sex, and in bold defiance to all such deceivers, I throw down my gauntlet."
"How, in the name of Cot, came you to be so valiant, (cried Camelford,) as to think of fighting tuels for other people's pranks?"
"Because many of the fair sex are too gentle to vindicate themselves, too artless for suspicion, and too lovely to fall a sacrifice, without arming the hand of courage to avenge their injuries; for I think the man, who can trifle with the peace of a fellow-creature, may be justly compared to one of the exhalations of hell, sent to destroy and lay waste the small portion of happiness allotted to our mortal pilgrimage."
"You are warm, (said De Willows, confusedly;) perhaps I have undesignedly given you pain, without knowing I interfered with the wishes or pretensions of any one. On my honour, I never had any; but, on a subject so important, I cannot speak coolly, or canvass it with indifference. I will be frank, and own I admire Edeliza; and, were her heart as much in my power as I fear it is in your's, no man with impunity should wrest it from me."