eethearts, quarrel and
make it up again in the most engaging manner in the world.

This is just what I want to bring Fitzgerald to; but the perverse
monkey won't quarrel with me, do all I can: I am sure this is not my
fault, for I give him reason every day of his life.

Shenstone says admirably, "That reconciliation is the tenderest part
of love and friendship: the soul here discovers a kind of elasticity,
and, being forced back, returns with an additional violence."

Who would not quarrel for the pleasure of reconciliation! I shall be
very angry with Fitzgerald if he goes on in this mild way.

Tell your sister, she cannot be more mortified than I am, that it is
impossible for me to be at her masquerade.

Adieu! Your affectionate
A. Fitzgerald.

Don't you think, my dear Rivers, that marriage, on prudent
principles, is a horrid sort of an affair? It is really cruel of papas
and mammas to shut up two poor innocent creatures in a house together,
to plague and torment one another, who might have been very happy
separate.

Where people take their own time, and chuse for themselves, it is
another affair, and I begin to think it possible affection may last
through life.

I sometimes fancy to myself Fitzgerald and I loving on, from the
impassioned hour when I first honored him with my hand, to that
tranquil one, when we shall take our afternoon's nap _vis a vis_
in two arm chairs, by the fire-side, he a grave country justice, and I
his worship's good sort of a wife, the Lady Bountiful of the parish.

I have a notion there is nothing so very shocking in being an oldish
gentlewoman; what one loses in charms, is made up in the happy liberty
of doing and saying whatever one pleases. Adieu!

LETTER 217.

To Captain Fitzgerald.

Bellfield, Nov. 16.

My relation, Colonel Willmott, is just arrived from the East Indies,
rich, and full of the project of marrying his daughter to me.

My mother has this morning received a letter from him, pressing the
affair with an earnestness which rather makes me feel for his
disappointment, and wish to break it to him as gently as possible.

He talks of being at Bellfield on Wednesday evening, which is
Temple's masquerade; I shall stay behind at Bellfield, to receive him,
have a domino ready, and take him to Temple-house.

He seems to know nothing of my marriage or my sister's, and I wish
him not to know of the former till he has seen Emily.

The best apol