About one o’clock my master came up again, and he said, Will you come down to dinner, Pamela, when I send for you? Whatever you command, sir, I must do. But my lady won’t desire to see me. No matter whether she will or no. But I will not suffer, that she shall prescribe her insolent will to my wife, and in your own house too.—I will, by my tenderness to you, mortify her pride; and it cannot be done so well as to her face.
Dearest sir, said I, pray indulge me, and let me dine here by myself. It will make my lady but more inveterate.—Said he, I have told her we are married. She is out of all patience about it, and yet pretends not to believe it. Upon that I tell her, Then she shall have it her own way, and that I am not. And what has she to do with it either way? She has scolded and begged, commanded and prayed, blessed me, and cursed me, by turns, twenty times in these few hours. And I have sometimes soothed her, sometimes raged; and at last left her, and took a turn in the garden for an hour to compose myself, because you should not see how the foolish woman has ruffled me; and just now I came out, seeing her coming in.
Just as he had said so, I cried, Oh! my lady, my lady! for I heard her voice in the chamber, saying, Brother, brother, one word with you—stopping in sight of the closet where I was. He stepped out, and she went up to the window that looks towards the garden, and said, Mean fool that I am, to follow you up and down the house in this manner, though I am shunned and avoided by you! You a brother!—You a barbarian! Is it possible we could be born of one mother?
Why, said he, do you charge me with a conduct to you, that you bring upon yourself?—Is it not surprising that you should take the liberty with me, that the dear mother you have named never gave you an example for to any of her relations?—Was it not sufficient, that I was insolently taken to task by you in your letters, but my retirements must be invaded? My house insulted? And, if I have one person dearer to me than another, that that person must be singled out for an object of your violence?
Ay, said she, that one person is the thing!—But though I came with a resolution to be temperate, and to expostulate with you on your avoiding me so unkindly, yet cannot I have patience to look upon that bed in which I was born, and to be made the guilty scene of your wickedness with such a——
Hush! said he, I charge you! call not the dear girl by any name unworthy of her. You know not, as I told you, her excellence; and I desire you’ll not repeat the freedoms you have taken below.
She stamped with her foot, and said, God give me patience! So much contempt to a sister that loves you so well; and so much tenderness to a vile——
He put his hand before her mouth: Be silent, said he, once more, I charge you! You know not the innocence you abuse so freely. I ought not, neither will I bear it.
She sat down and fanned herself, and burst into tears, and such sobs of grief, or rather passion, that grieved me to hear; and I sat and trembled sadly.
He walked about the room in great anger; and at last said, Let me ask you, Lady Davers, why I am thus insolently to be called to account by you? Am I not independent? Am I not of age? Am I not at liberty to please myself?—Would to God, that, instead of a woman, and my sister, any man breathing had dared, whatever were his relation under that of a father, to give himself half the airs you have done!—Why did you not send on this accursed errand your lord, who could write me such a letter as no gentleman should write, nor any gentleman tamely receive? He should have seen the difference.