You need not be afraid of any body's knowing what passes between us
on this cutting subject. Though I hear of it from every mouth, yet
I pretend 'tis all falsehood and malice. Yet Lady Betty will have it
that there is more in it than I will own; and that I know my brother's
wickedness by my pensive looks. She will make a vow, she says, never
to marry any man living.
I am greatly moved by your affecting periods. Charming Pamela! what a
tempest do you raise in one's mind, when you please, and lay it
too, at your own will! Your colourings are strong; but, I hope, your
imagination carries you much farther than it is possible he should go.
I am pleased with your prudent reasonings, and your wise resolutions.
I see nobody can advise or help you. God only can! And his direction
you beg _so_ hourly, that I make no doubt you will have it.
What vexes me is, that when the noble uncle of this vile lady--(why
don't you call her so as well as I?)--expostulated with her on the
scandals she brought upon her character and family, she pretended to
argue (foolish creature!) to polygamy: and said, she had rather be a
certain gentleman's second wife, than the first to the greatest man in
England.
I leave you to your own workings; but if I find your prudence
unrewarded by the wretch, the storm you saw raised at the Hall, shall
be nothing to the hurricane I will excite, to tear up by the roots all
the happiness the two wretches propose to themselves.
Don't let my intelligence, which is undoubted, grieve you over-much.
Try some way to move the wretch. It must be done by touching his
generosity: he has that in some perfection. But how in _this_ case to
move it, is beyond my power or skill to prescribe. God bless you, my
dearest Pamela! You shall be my _only_ sister. And I will never own my
brother, if he be so base to your superlative merit. Adieu once more,
_from your sister and friend,_ B. DAVERS.