ndoubted, his even
constitutional narrowness: his too probably jealousy, and unforgiveness,
bearing in my mind my declared aversion, and the unfeigned despights I
took all opportunities to do him, in order to discourage his address:
a preference avowed against him from the same motive; with the pride he
professes to take in curbing and sinking the spirits of a woman he had
acquired a right to tyrannize over: had you, I say, been witness of
my different emotions as I read; now leaning this way, now that; now
perplexed; now apprehensive; now angry at one, then at another; now
resolving; now doubting; you would have seen the power you have over me;
and would have had reason to believe, that, had you given your advice
in any determined or positive manner, I had been ready to have
been concluded by it. So, my dear, you will find, from these
acknowledgements, that you must justify me to those laws of friendship,
which require undisguised frankness of heart; although you justification
of me in that particular, will perhaps be at the expense of my prudence.

But, upon the whole, this I do repeat--That nothing but the last
extremity shall make me abandon my father's house, if they will permit
me to stay; and if I can, by any means, by any honest pretences, but
keep off my evil destiny in it till my cousin Morden arrives. As one
of my trustees, his is a protection, into which I may without discredit
throw myself, if my other friends should remain determined. And this
(although they seem too well aware of it) is all my hope: for, as
to Lovelace, were I to be sure of his tenderness, and even of his
reformation, must not the thought of embracing the offered protection of
his family, be the same thing, in the world's eye, as accepting of his
own?--Could I avoid receiving his visits at his own relations'? Must I
not be his, whatever, (on seeing him in a nearer light,) I should find
him out to be? For you know, it has always been my observation, that
very few people in courtship see each other as they are. Oh! my dear!
how wise have I endeavoured to be! How anxious to choose, and to avoid
every thing, precautiously, as I may say, that might make me happy,
or unhappy; yet all my wisdom now, by a strange fatality, is likely to
become foolishness!

Then you tell me, in your usual kindly-partial manner, what is expected
of me, more than would be of some others. This should be a lesson to me.
What ever my motives were, the world would not