I should be ashamed to shew my face in public, or to look up. And
all by the instigation of a selfish brother, and envious sister--

But let me stop: let me reflect!--Are not these suggestions the
suggestions of the secret pride I have been censuring? Then, already
so impatient! but this moment so resigned, so much better disposed
for reflection! yet 'tis hard, 'tis very hard, to subdue an embittered
spirit!--in the instant of its trial too!--O my cruel brother!--but
now it rises again.--I will lay down a pen I am so little able
to govern.--And I will try to subdue an impatience, which (if my
afflictions are sent me for corrective ends) may otherwise lead me into
still more punishable errors.--

*****

I will return to a subject, which I cannot fly from for ten minutes
together--called upon especially, as I am, by your three alternatives
stated in the conclusion of your last.

As to the first; to wit, your advice for me to escape to London--let me
tell you, that the other hint or proposal which accompanies it perfectly
frightens me--surely, my dear, (happy as you are, and indulgently
treated as your mother treats you,) you cannot mean what you propose!
What a wretch must I be, if, for one moment only, I could lend an ear
to such a proposal as this!--I, to be the occasion of making such
a mother's (perhaps shortened) life unhappy to the last hour of
it!--Ennoble you, my dear creature! How must such an enterprise (the
rashness public, the motives, were they excusable, private) debase
you!--but I will not dwell upon the subject--for your own sake I will
not.

As to your second alternative, to put myself into the protection of Lord
M. and of the ladies of that family, I own to you, (as I believe I have
owned before,) that although to do this would be the same thing in the
eye of the world as putting myself into Mr. Lovelace's protection, yet
I think I would do it rather than be Mr. Solmes's wife, if there were
evidently no other way to avoid being so.

Mr. Lovelace, you have seen, proposes to contrive a way to put me into
possession of my own house; and he tells me, that he will soon fill
it with the ladies of his family, as my visiters;--upon my invitation,
however, to them. A very inconsiderate proposal I think it to be,
and upon which I cannot explain myself to him. What an exertion of
independency does it chalk out for me! How, were I to attend to him,
(and not to the natural consequences to which the follow