verence to permit them to explain themselves. Hence
your Symmes's, your Byron's, your Mullins's, your Wyerley's (the best
of the herd), and your Solmes's, in turn, invade you--Wretches that,
looking upon the rest of your family, need not despair of succeeding in
an alliance with it--But to you, what an inexcusable presumption!

Yet I am afraid all opposition will be in vain. You must, you will, I
doubt, be sacrificed to this odious man. I know your family. There will
be no resisting such baits as he has thrown out. O, my dear, my beloved
friend! and are such charming qualities, is such exalted merit, to be
sunk in such a marriage!--You must not, your uncle tells your mother,
dispute their authority. AUTHORITY! what a full word is that in the
mouth of a narrow-minded person, who happened to be born thirty years
before one!--Of your uncles I speak; for as to the paternal authority,
that ought to be sacred.--But should not parents have reason for what
they do?

Wonder not, however, at your Bell's unsisterly behaviour in this affair:
I have a particular to add to the inducements your insolent brother is
governed by, which will account for all her driving. You have already
owned, that her outward eye was from the first struck with the figure
and address of the man whom she pretends to despise, and who, 'tis
certain, thoroughly despises her: but you have not told me, that still
she loves him of all men. Bell has a meanness in her very pride; that
meanness rises with her pride, and goes hand in hand with it; and no
one is so proud as Bell. She has owned her love, her uneasy days,
and sleepless nights, and her revenge grafted upon her love, to her
favourite Betty Barnes--To lay herself in the power of a servant's
tongue! Poor creature!--But LIKE little souls will find one another
out, and mingle, as well as LIKE great ones. This, however, she told the
wench in strict confidence: and thus, by way of the female round-about,
as Lovelace had the sauciness on such another occasion, in ridicule of
our sex, to call it, Betty (pleased to be thought worthy of a secret,
and to have an opportunity of inveighing against Lovelace's perfidy,
as she would have it to be) told it to one of her confidants:
that confidant, with like injunctions of secrecy, to Miss Lloyd's
Harriot--Harriot to Miss Lloyd--Miss Lloyd to me--I to you--with leave
to make what you please of it.

And now you will not wonder to find Miss Bell an implacable rival,
rath