peat to you, my dear, now I know what wretches they
are, the tender, the obliging, and the respectful things I said to them.

The wretch himself then came forward. He threw himself at my feet. How
was I beset!--The women grasping, one my right hand, the other my left:
the pretended Miss Montague pressing to her lips more than once the hand
she held: the wicked man on his knees, imploring my forgiveness; and
setting before me my happy and my unhappy prospects, as I should forgive
and not forgive him. All that he thought would affect me in former
pleas, and those of Capt. Tomlinson, he repeated. He vowed, he promised,
he bespoke the pretended ladies to answer for him; and they engaged their
honours in his behalf.

Indeed, my dear, I was distressed, perfectly distressed. I was sorry
that I had given way to this visit. For I knew not how, in tenderness to
relations, (as I thought them,) so worthy, to treat so freely as he
deserved, a man nearly allied to them: so that my arguments and my
resolutions were deprived of their greatest force.

I pleaded, however, my application to you. I expected every hour, I told
them, an answer from you to a letter I had written, which would decide my
future destiny.

They offered to apply to you themselves in person, in their own behalf,
as they politely termed it. They besought me to write to you to hasten
your answer.

I said, I was sure that you would write the moment that the event of an
application to be made to a third person enabled you to write. But as to
the success of their request in behalf of their kinsman, that depended
not upon the expected answer; for that, I begged their pardon, was out of
the question. I wished him well. I wished him happy. But I was
convinced, that I neither could make him so, nor he me.

Then! how the wretch promised!--How he vowed!--How he entreated!--And how
the women pleaded!--And they engaged themselves, and the honour of their
whole family, for his just, his kind, his tender behaviour to me.

In short, my dear, I was so hard set, that I was obliged to come to a
more favourable compromise with them than I had intended. I would wait
for your answer to my letter, I said: and if that made doubtful or
difficult the change of measures I had resolved upon, and the scheme of
life I had formed, I would then consider of the matter; and, if they
would permit me, lay all before them, and take their advice upon it, in
conjunction with your's, a