contemptible!--
'I see not but they are a set of infernals!' There's one for thee,
Lovelace! and yet she would have her friend marry a Beelzebub.--And what
have any of us done, (within the knowledge of Miss Harlowe,) that she
should give such an account of us, as should excuse so much abuse from
Miss Howe!--But the occasion that shall warrant this abuse is to come!

She blames her, for 'not admitting Miss Partington to her bed--watchful,
as you are, what could have happened?--If violence were intended, he
would not stay for the night.' I am ashamed to have this hinted to me by
this virago. Sally writes upon this hint--'See, Sir, what is expected
from you. An hundred, and an hundred times have we told you of this.'--
And so they have. But to be sure, the advice from them was not half the
efficacy as it will be from Miss Howe.--'You might have sat up after her,
or not gone to bed,' proceeds she.

But can there be such apprehensions between them, yet the one advise her
to stay, and the other resolve to wait my imperial motion for marriage?
I am glad I know that.

She approves of my proposal of Mrs. Fretchville's house. She puts her
upon expecting settlements; upon naming a day: and concludes with
insisting upon her writing, notwithstanding her mother's prohibitions;
or bids her 'take the consequence.' Undutiful wretches! How I long to
vindicate against them both the insulted parental character!

Thou wilt say to thyself, by this time, And can this proud and insolent
girl be the same Miss Howe, who sighed for an honest Sir George Colmar;
and who, but for this her beloved friend, would have followed him in all
his broken fortunes, when he was obliged to quit the kingdom?

Yes, she is the very same. And I always found in others, as well as in
myself, that a first passion thoroughly subdued, made the conqueror of it
a rover; the conqueress a tyrant.

Well, but now comes mincing in a letter, from one who has 'the honour of
dear Miss Howe's commands'* to acquaint Miss Harlowe, that Miss Howe is
'excessively concerned for the concern she has given her.'

* See Vol. IV. Letter XII.

'I have great temptations, on this occasion,' says the prim Gothamite,
'to express my own resentments upon your present state.'

'My own resentments!'----And why did he not fall into this temptation?
--Why, truly, because he knew not what that state was which gave him so
tempting a subject--only by a conjecture, and so forth.

H