ear not, however, that your communications shall put me upon any
measures that otherwise I should not have taken. The wickedness, Sir, is
of such a nature, as admits not of aggravation.

Yet I do assure you, that I have not made any resolutions that will be a
tie upon me.

I have indeed expressed myself with vehemence upon the occasion. Who
could forbear to do so? But it is not my way to resolve in matters of
moment, till opportunity brings the execution of my purposes within my
reach. We shall see by what manner of spirit this young man will be
actuated on his recovery. If he continue to brave and defy a family,
which he has so irreparably injured--if--but resolutions depending upon
future contingencies are best left to future determination, as I just
now hinted.

Mean time, I will own that I think my cousin's arguments unanswerable.
No good man but must be influenced by them.--But, alas! Sir, who is good?

As to your arguments; I hope you will believe me, when I assure you, as I
now do, that your opinion and your reasonings have, and will always have,
great and deserved weight with me; and that I respect you still more than
I did, if possible, for your expostulations in support of my cousin's
pious injunctions to me. They come from you, Sir, with the greatest
propriety, as her executor and representative; and likewise as you are a
man of humanity, and a well-wisher to both parties.

I am not exempt from violent passions, Sir, any more than your friend;
but then I hope they are only capable of being raised by other people's
insolence, and not by my own arrogance. If ever I am stimulated by my
imperfections and my resentments to act against my judgment and my
cousin's injunctions, some such reflections as these that follow will
run away with my reason. Indeed they are always present with me.

In the first place; my own disappointment: who came over with the hope of
passing the remainder of my days in the conversation of a kinswoman
so beloved; and to whom I have a double relation as her cousin and
trustee.

Then I reflect, too, too often perhaps for my engagements to her in her
last hours, that the dear creature could only forgive for herself.
She, no doubt, is happy: but who shall forgive for a whole family,
in all its branches made miserable for their lives?

That the more faulty her friends were as to her, the more enormous his
ingratitude, and the more inex