gs to
suit me within a short distance of you.

Your most attached

S. VERNON.

XXVI

MRS. JOHNSON TO LADY SUSAN

Edward Street.

I am gratified by your reference, and this is my advice: that you come
to town yourself, without loss of time, but that you leave Frederica
behind. It would surely be much more to the purpose to get yourself well
established by marrying Mr. De Courcy, than to irritate him and the rest
of his family by making her marry Sir James. You should think more of
yourself and less of your daughter. She is not of a disposition to do
you credit in the world, and seems precisely in her proper place at
Churchhill, with the Vernons. But you are fitted for society, and it
is shameful to have you exiled from it. Leave Frederica, therefore,
to punish herself for the plague she has given you, by indulging that
romantic tender-heartedness which will always ensure her misery enough,
and come to London as soon as you can. I have another reason for urging
this: Mainwaring came to town last week, and has contrived, in spite
of Mr. Johnson, to make opportunities of seeing me. He is absolutely
miserable about you, and jealous to such a degree of De Courcy that it
would be highly unadvisable for them to meet at present. And yet, if you
do not allow him to see you here, I cannot answer for his not committing
some great imprudence--such as going to Churchhill, for instance, which
would be dreadful! Besides, if you take my advice, and resolve to marry
De Courcy, it will be indispensably necessary to you to get Mainwaring
out of the way; and you only can have influence enough to send him back
to his wife. I have still another motive for your coming: Mr. Johnson
leaves London next Tuesday; he is going for his health to Bath, where,
if the waters are favourable to his constitution and my wishes, he will
be laid up with the gout many weeks. During his absence we shall be able
to chuse our own society, and to have true enjoyment. I would ask you to
Edward Street, but that once he forced from me a kind of promise never
to invite you to my house; nothing but my being in the utmost distress
for money should have extorted it from me. I can get you, however,
a nice drawing-room apartment in Upper Seymour Street, and we may be
always together there or here; for I consider my promise to Mr. Johnson
as comprehending only (at least in his absence) your not sleeping in the
house. Poor Mainwaring gives me such histor