Page:Diary of the times of Charles II Vol. I.djvu/41

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INTRODUCTION.
xxix

all that at present I desire your Lordship to do is to let me have half a year's money next Monday. You know that I have lately begged that you would be pleased to send me a £100 to pay some small debts, . . . . . . . . . .

"Pray, my dear Lord, do not deny me so poor a business as a little money now at Midsummer, for fear it may again transport me to do something that will go very much against the grain with me to do towards the man that in my soul I do adore and still love too well. I wish I did not. I am sure you never loved money well enough to deny me or any body any reasonable sum out of a meanly miserable esteem for dross, but you have no other way to be revenged on me but to strip me naked and confine me; but, my Lord, how poor and how ignoble a revenge is this of yours to me, a poor, deluded woman, that hath loved you above myself, nay, above heaven or honour, and hath generously spent my youth with you in discontent and suffering! Whereas I might have had plenty and ease with others; and, if my too great confidence in your great worth and honour and generosity has betrayed me to irrecoverable ruin, yet, my Lord, you must certainly pity me, though you hate me: but I will not yet despair but that I may live to