power of conviction.

I was still silent.

I have been considering what you proposed to me, Madam, that I should
acquiesce with such terms as you should think proper to comply with, in
order to a reconciliation with your friends.

Well, Sir.

And I find all just, all just, on your side; and all impatience, all
inconsideration on mine.

I stared, you may suppose. Whence this change, Sir? and so soon?

I am so much convinced that you must be in the right in all you think
fit to insist upon, that I shall for the future mistrust myself; and,
if it be possible, whenever I differ with you, take an hour's time for
recollection, before I give way to that vehemence, which an opposition,
to which I have not been accounted, too often gives me.

All this is mighty good, Sir: But to what does it tend?

Why, Madam, when I came to consider what you had proposed, as to the
terms of reconciliation with your friends; and when I recollected that
you had always referred to yourself to approve or reject me, according
to my merits or demerits; I plainly saw, that it was rather a
condescension in you, than that you were imposing a new law: and I
now, Madam, beg your pardon for my impatience: whatever terms you think
proper to come into with your relations, which will enable you to
honour me with the conditional effect of your promise to me, to these be
pleased to consent: and if I lose you, insupportable as that thought is
to me; yet, as it must be by my own fault, I ought to thank myself for
it.

What think you, Miss Howe?--Do you believe he can have any view in
this?--I cannot see any he could have; and I thought it best, as he put
it in so right a manner, to appear not to doubt the sincerity of his
confession, and to accept of it as sincere.

He then read to me part of Lady Betty's letter; turning down the
beginning, which was a little too severe upon him, he said, for my eye:
and I believe, by the style, the remainder of it was in a corrective
strain.

It was too plain, I told him, that he must have great faults, that none
of his relations could write to him, but with a mingled censure for some
bad action.

And it is as plain, my dearest creature, said he, that you, who know
not of any such faults, but by surmise, are equally ready to condemn
me.--Will not charity allow you to infer, that their charges are no
better grounded?--And that my principal fault has been carelessness of
my character, and too little solicitude to c