Once more I write, although imperiously prohibited by a younger sister.
Your mother will have me do so, that you may be destitute of all
defence, if you persist in your pervicacy. Shall I be a pedant, Miss,
for this word? She is willing to indulge in you the least appearance of
that delicacy for which she once, as well as every body else, admired
you--before you knew Lovelace; I cannot, however, help saying that: and
she, and your aunt Hervey, will have it--[they would fain favour you,
if they could] that I may have provoked from you the answer they
nevertheless own to be so exceedingly unbecoming. I am now learning, you
see, to take up the softer language, where you have laid it down. This
then is the case:
They entreat, they pray, they beg, they supplicate (will either of
these do, Miss Clary?) that you will make no scruple to go to your uncle
Antony's: and fairly I am to tell you, for the very purpose mentioned
in my last--or, 'tis presumable, they need not entreat, beg, pray,
supplicate. Thus much is promised to Mr. Solmes, who is your advocate,
and very uneasy that you should be under constraint, supposing that your
dislike to him arises from that. And, if he finds that you are not to be
moved in his favour, when you are absolutely freed from what you call
a controul, he will forbear thinking of you, whatever it costs him.
He loves you too well: and in this, I really think, his understanding,
which you have reflected upon, is to be questioned.
Only for one fornight [sic], therefore, permit his visits. Your
education (you tell me of mine, you know) ought to make you incapable
of rudeness to any body. He will not, I hope, be the first man, myself
excepted, whom you ever treated rudely, purely because he is esteemed
by us all. I am, what you have a mind to make me, friend, brother,
or servant--I wish I could be still more polite, to so polite, to so
delicate, a sister.