, before this
cursed woman's officiousness, to use her interest with her friend in my
behalf: and yet she told my cousins, in the visit they made her, that it
was her opinion that she would never forgive me. I send to thee enclosed
copies of all that passed on this occasion between my cousins Montague,
Miss Howe, myself, Lady Betty, Lady Sarah, and Lord M.

I long to know what Miss Howe wrote to her friend, in order to induce her
to marry the despicable plotter; the man whose friendship is no credit to
any body; the wicked, wicked man. Thou hadst the two letters in thy
hand. Had they been in mine, the seal would have yielded to the touch of
my warm finger, (perhaps without the help of the post-office bullet;) and
the folds, as other placations have done, opened of themselves to oblige
my curiosity. A wicked omission, Jack, not to contrive to send them down
to me by man and horse! It might have passed, that the messenger who
brought the second letter, took them both back. I could have returned
them by another, when copied, as from Miss Howe, and nobody but myself
and thee the wiser.

That's a charming girl! her spirit, her delightful spirit!--not to be
married to it--how I wish to get that lively bird into my cage! how would
I make her flutter and fly about!--till she left a feather upon every
wire!

Had I begun there, I am confident, as I have heretofore said,* that I
should not have had half the difficulty with her as I have had with her
charming friend. For these passionate girls have high pulses, and a
clever fellow may make what sport he pleases with their unevenness--now
too high, now too low, you need only to provoke and appease them by
turns; to bear with them, and to forbear to tease and ask pardon; and
sometimes to give yourself the merit of a sufferer from them; then
catching them in the moment of concession, conscious of their ill usage
of you, they are all your own.

* See Vol. VI. Letter VII.

But these sedate, contemplative girls, never out of temper but with
reason; when that reason is given them, hardly ever pardon, or afford you
another opportunity to offend.

It was in part the apprehension that this would be so with my dear Miss
Harlowe, that made me carry her to a place where I believed she would be
unable to escape me, although I were not to succeed in my first attempts.
Else widow Sorlings's would have been as well for me as widow Sinclair's.
For early I saw that there was no cred