ou to know so much
as to guess who, and whether man or woman, my visiter was: but since you
have the discovery at so cheap a rate, you are welcome to it.

The end of his coming was, to engage my interest with my charming
friend; and he was sure that I knew all your mind, to acquaint him what
he had to trust to.

He mentioned what had passed in the interview between you: but could not
be satisfied with the result of it, and with the little satisfaction he
had obtained from you: the malice of your family to him increasing, and
their cruelty to you not abating. His heart, he told me, was in tumults,
for fear you should be prevailed upon in favour of a man despised by
every body.

He gave me fresh instance of indignities cast upon himself by your
uncles and brother; and declared, that if you suffered yourself to
be forced into the arms of the man for whose sake he was loaded with
undeserved abuses, you should be one of the youngest, as you would be
one of the loveliest widows in England. And that he would moreover call
your brother to account for the liberties he takes with his character to
every one he meets with.

He proposed several schemes, for you to choose some one of them, in
order to enable you to avoid the persecutions you labour under: One
I will mention--That you will resume your estate; and if you find
difficulties that can be no otherwise surmounted, that you will, either
avowedly or privately, as he had proposed to you, accept of Lady Betty
Lawrance's or Lord M.'s assistance to instate you in it. He declared,
that if you did, he would leave absolutely to your own pleasure
afterwards, and to the advice which your cousin Morden on his arrival
should give you, whether to encourage his address, or not, as you should
be convinced of the sincerity of the reformation which his enemies make
him so much want.

I had now a good opportunity to sound him, as you wished Mr. Hickman
would Lord M. as to the continued or diminished favour of the ladies,
and of his Lordship, towards you, upon their being acquainted with the
animosity of your relations to them, as well as to their kinsman. I laid
hold of the opportunity, and he satisfied me, by reading some passages
of a letter he had about him, from Lord M. That an alliance with
you, and that on the foot of your own single merit, would be the most
desirable event to them that could happen: and so far to the purpose of
your wished inquiry does his Lordship go in this lett