rudely to you: but, if you knew all,
you would forgive me.

I know enough, Madam, to convince me, that there is not such purity and
honour in any woman upon earth; nor any one that has been so barbarously
treated.

She looked at me very earnestly. What she thought, I cannot say; but, in
general, I never saw so much soul in a woman's eyes as in her's.

I ordered my servant, (whose mourning made him less observable as such,
and who had not been in the lady's eye,) to keep the chair in view; and
to bring me word, how she did, when set down. The fellow had the thought
to step into the shop, just before the chair entered it, under pretence
of buying snuff; and so enabled himself to give me an account, that she
was received with great joy by the good woman of the house; who told her,
she was but just come in; and was preparing to attend her in High
Holborn.--O Mrs. Smith, said she, as soon as she saw her, did you not
think I was run away?--You don't know what I have suffered since I saw
you. I have been in a prison!----Arrested for debts I owe not!--But,
thank God, I am here!--Will your maid--I have forgot her name already----

Catharine, Madam----

Will you let Catharine assist me to bed?--I have not had my clothes off
since Thursday night.

What she further said the fellow heard not, she leaning upon the maid,
and going up stairs.

But dost thou not observe, what a strange, what an uncommon openness of
heart reigns in this lady? She had been in a prison, she said, before a
stranger in the shop, and before the maid-servant: and so, probably, she
would have said, had there been twenty people in the shop.

The disgrace she cannot hide from herself, as she says in her letter to
Lady Betty, she is not solicitous to conceal from the world!

But this makes it evident to me, that she is resolved to keep no terms
with thee. And yet to be able to put up such a prayer for thee, as she
did in her prison; [I will often mention the prison-room, to tease thee!]
Does this not show, that revenge has very little sway in her mind; though
she can retain so much proper resentment?

And this is another excellence in this admirable woman's character: for
whom, before her, have we met with in the whole sex, or in ours either,
that knew how, in practice, to distinguish between REVENGE and
RESENTMENT, for base and ungrateful treatment?

'Tis a cursed thing, after all, that such a woman as this should be
treated as she has been trea