now, that you have so well proved, that such a step would not avail
you, I am entirely at a loss what to say.

I will lay down my pen, and think.

*****

I have considered, and considered again; but, I protest, I know no more
what to say now, than before. Only this: That I am young, like yourself;
and have a much weaker judgment, and stronger passions, than you have.

I have heretofore said, that you have offered as much as you ought, in
offering to live single. If you were never to marry, the estate they are
so loth should go out of their name, would, in time, I suppose, revert
to your brother: and he or his would have it, perhaps, much more
certainly this way, than by the precarious reversions which Solmes makes
them hope for. Have you put this into their odd heads, my dear?--The
tyrant word AUTHORITY, as they use it, can be the only objection against
this offer.

One thing you must consider, that, if you leave your parents, your duty
and love will not suffer you to justify yourself by an appeal against
them; and so you'll have the world against you. And should Lovelace
continue his wild life, and behave ungratefully to you, will not his
baseness seem to justify their cruel treatment of you, as well as their
dislike of him?

May heaven direct you for the best!--I can only say, that for my own
part, I would do any thing, go any where, rather than be compelled to
marry the man I hate; and (were he such a man as Solmes) must always
hate. Nor could I have borne what you have borne, if from father and
uncles, not from brother and sister.

My mother will have it, that after they have tried their utmost efforts
to bring you into their measures, and find them ineffectual, they will
recede. But I cannot say I am of her mind. She does not own, she has
any authority for this, but her own conjecture. I should otherwise have
hoped, that your uncle Antony and she had been in on one secret, and
that favourable to you. Woe be to one of them at least [to you uncle to
be sure I mean] if they should be in any other!

You must, if possible, avoid being carried to that uncle's. The man, the
parson, your brother and sister present!--They'll certainly there marry
you to the wretch. Nor will your newly-raised spirit support you in your
resistance on such an occasion. Your meekness will return; and you
will have nothing for it but tears [tears despised by them all] and
ineffectual appeals and lamentations: and these tears when t