eving that all would soon be
decided one way or other.

***

[Here I was forced to break off. I am too little my own mistress:--My
mother* is always up and down--and watching as if I were writing to a
fellow. What need I (she asks me,) lock myself in,** if I am only
reading past correspondencies? For that is my pretence, when she comes
poking in with her face sharpened to an edge, as I may say, by a
curiosity that gives her more pain than pleasure.--The Lord forgive me;
but I believe I shall huff her next time she comes in.]

* See Letter XX. of this volume.
** Ibid.

***

Do you forgive me too, my dear--my mother ought; because she says I am my
father's girl; and because I am sure I am her's.

[Upon my life, my dear, I am sometimes of opinion, that this vile man was
capable of meaning you dishonour. When I look back upon his past conduct,
I cannot help, and verily believe, that he has laid aside such thoughts.
My reasons for both opinions I will give you.]

[For the first: to-wit, that he had it once in his head to take you at
advantage if he could, I consider* that] pride, revenge, and a delight to
tread in unbeaten paths, are principal ingredients in the character of
this finished libertine. He hates all your family, yourself excepted--
yet is a savage in love. His pride, and the credit which a few plausible
qualities, sprinkled among his odious ones, have given him, have secured
him too good a reception from our eye-judging, our undistinguishing, our
self--flattering, our too-confiding sex, to make assiduity and
obsequiousness, and a conquest of his unruly passions, any part of his
study.

He has some reason for his animosity to all the men, and to one woman of
your family. He has always shown you, and his own family too, that he
prefers his pride to his interest. He is a declared marriage-hater; a
notorious intriguer; full of his inventions, and glorying in them.--As
his vanity had made him imagine that no woman could be proof against his
love, no wonder that he struggled like a lion held in toils,* against a
passion that he thought not returned.** Hence, perhaps, it is not
difficult to believe, that it became possible for such a wretch as this
to give way to his old prejudices against marriage; and to that revenge
which had always been a first passion with him.***

* See Letter XX. of this volume.
** Ibid.
*** Ibid.

[And hence we may account for] his delays--his teasing way