your uncle and I should have been too much alike, and
so been jealous of each other's wit; whereas I can make my honest Lord
G---- look about him, and admire me strangely, whenever I please.

But I am, it seems, a person of a particular character. Every one, you
say, loves me, yet blames me. Odd characters, my dear, are needful to
make even characters shine. You good girls would not be valued as you
are, if there were not bad ones. Have you not heard it said, that all
human excellence is but comparative? Pray allow of the contrast. You, I
am sure, ought. You are an ungrateful creature, if, whenever you think
of my over-livelinesses, as you call 'em, you don't drop a courtesy, and
say, you are obliged to me.

But still the attack made upon you in your dressing-room at Colnebrook,
by my sister and me, sticks in your stomach--And why so? We were willing
to shew you, that we were not the silly people you must have thought us,
had we not been able to distinguish light from darkness. You, who ever
were, I believe, one of the frankest-hearted girls in Britain, and
admired for the ease and dignity given you by that frankness, were
growing awkward, nay dishonest. Your gratitude! your gratitude! was the
dust you wanted to throw into our eyes, that we might not see that you
were governed by a stronger motive. You called us your friends, your
sisters, but treated us not as either; and this man, and that, and
t'other, you could refuse; and why? No reason given for it; and we were
to be popt off with your gratitude, truly!--We were to believe just what
you said, and no more; nay, not so much as you said. But we were not so
implicit. Nor would you, in our case, have been so.

But 'you, perhaps, would not have violently broken in upon a poor thing,
who thought we were blind, because she was not willing we should see.'--
May be not: but then, in that case, we were honester than you would have
been; that's all. Here, said I, Lady L----, is this poor girl awkwardly
struggling to conceal what every body sees; and, seeing, applauds her
for, the man considered: [Yes, Harriet, the man considered; be pleased to
take that in:] let us, in pity, relieve her. She is thought to be frank,
open-hearted, communicative; nay, she passes herself upon us in those
characters: she sees we keep nothing from her. She has been acquainted
with your love before wedlock; with my folly, in relation to Anderson:
she has carried her head above a score or two of me