lear myself, when aspersed?
Which, I do assure you, is the case.

Lady Betty, in her letter, expresses herself in the most obliging manner
in relation to me. 'She wishes him so to behave, as to encourage me to
make him soon happy. She desires her compliments to me; and expresses
her impatience to see, as her niece, so celebrated a lady [those are her
high words]. She shall take it for an honour, she says, to be put into
a way to oblige me. She hopes I will not too long delay the ceremony;
because that performed, will be to her, and to Lord M. and Lady Sarah, a
sure pledge of her nephew's merits and good behaviour.'

She says, 'she was always sorry to hear of the hardships I had met with
on his account: that he will be the most ungrateful of me, if he make it
not all up to me: and that she thinks it incumbent upon all their family
to supply to me the lost favour of my own: and, for her part, nothing of
that kind, she bids him assure me, shall be wanting.'

Her ladyship observes, 'That the treatment he had received from my
family would have been much more unaccountable than it was, with such
natural and accidental advantages as he had, had it not been owing
to his own careless manners. But she hopes that he will convince the
Harlowe family that they had thought worse of him than he had deserved;
since now it was in his power to establish his character for ever. This
she prays to God to enable him to do, as well for his own honour, as for
the honour of their house,' was the magnificent word.

She concludes, with 'desiring to be informed of our nuptials the moment
they are celebrated, that she may be with the earliest in felicitating
me on the happy occasion.'

But her Ladyship gives me no direct invitation to attend her before the
marriage: which I might have expected from what he had told me.

He then shewed me part of Miss Montague's more sprightly letter,
'congratulating him upon the honour he had obtained, of the confidence
of so admirable a lady.' These are her words. Confidence, my dear!
Nobody, indeed, as you say, will believe otherwise, were they to be
told the truth: and you see that Miss Montague (and all his family, I
suppose) think that the step I have taken an extraordinary one. 'She
also wishes for his speedy nuptials; and to see her new cousin at M.
Hall: as do Lord M. she tells him, and her sister; and in general all
the well-wishers of their family.

'Whenever this happy day shall be passed, she pro