e such a man's for life? Were I to comply, must I not
leave my relations, and go to him? A month will decide the one, perhaps:
But what a duration of woe will the other be!--Every day, it is likely,
rising to witness to some new breach of an altar-vowed duty!

Then, my dear, the man seems already to be meditating vengeance against
me for an aversion I cannot help: for yesterday my saucy gaoleress
assured me, that all my oppositions would not signify that pinch of
snuff, holding out her genteel finger and thumb: that I must have Mr.
Solmes: that therefore I had not best carry my jest too far; for that
Mr. Solmes was a man of spirit, and had told HER, that as I should
surely be his, I acted very unpolitely; since, if he had not more mercy
[that was her word, I know not if it were his] than I had, I might have
cause to repent the usage I gave him to the last day of my life. But
enough of this man; who, by what you repeat from Sir Harry Downeton,
has all the insolence of his sex, without any one quality to make that
insolence tolerable.

I have receive two letters from Mr. Lovelace, since his visit to you;
which make three that I have not answered. I doubt not his being very
uneasy; but in his last he complains in high terms of my silence; not
in the still small voice, or rather style of an humble lover, but in a
style like that which would probably be used by a slighted protector.
And his pride is again touched, that like a thief, or eves-dropper, he
is forced to dodge about in hopes of a letter, and returns five miles
(and then to an inconvenient lodging) without any.

His letters and the copy of mine to him, shall soon attend you. Till
when, I will give you the substance of what I wrote him yesterday.

I take him severely to task for his freedom in threatening me, through
you, with a visit to Mr. Solmes, or to my brother. I say, 'That, surely,
I must be thought to be a creature fit to bear any thing; that violence
and menaces from some of my own family are not enough for me to bear, in
order to make me avoid him; but that I must have them from him too, if
I oblige those to whom it is both my inclination and duty to oblige in
every thing that is reasonable, and in my power.

'Very extraordinary, I tell him, that a violent spirit shall threaten to
do a rash and unjustifiable thing, which concerns me but a little, and
himself a great deal, if I do not something as rash, my character and
sex considered, to divert him fro