Your last so sensibly affects me, that I must postpone every other
consideration, however weighty, to reply to it: and this I will do
very distinctly, and with all the openness of heart which our mutual
friendship demands.
But let me observe, in the first place, gratefully observe, that if I
have in fifty passages of my letters given you such undoubted proofs of
my value for Mr. Lovelace, that you have spared me for the sake of my
explicitness, it is acting by me with a generosity worthy of yourself.
But lives the man, think you, who is so very bad, that he does not give
even a doubting mind reason at one time to be better pleased with him
than at another? And when that reason offers, is it not just to express
one's self accordingly? I would do the man who addresses me as much
justice, as if he did not address me: it has such a look of tyranny, it
appears so ungenerous, methinks, in our sex, to use a man worse for his
respect to us, (no other cause for disrespect occurring,) that I would
not by any means be that person who should do so.
But, although I may intend no more than justice, it will perhaps be
difficult to hinder those who know the man's views, from construing it
as a partial favour: and especially if the eager-eyed observer has been
formerly touched herself, and would triumph that her friend had been no
more able to escape than she. Noble minds, emulative of perfection, (and
yet the passion properly directed, I do not take to be an imperfection
neither,) may be allowed a little generous envy, I think.
If I meant by this a reflection, by way of revenge, it is but a revenge,
my dear, in the soft sense of the word. I love, as I have told you, your
pleasantry. Although at the time your reproof may pain me a little; yet,
on recollection, when I find it more of the cautioning friend than
of the satirizing observer, I shall be all gratitude upon it. All the
business will be this; I shall be sensible of the pain in the present
letter perhaps; but I shall thank you in the next, and ever after.
In this way, I hope, my dear, you will account for a little of
that sensibility which you find above, and perhaps still more, as I
proceed.--You frequently remind me, by an excellent example, your own to
me, that I must not spare you!
I am not conscious, that I have written any thing of this man, that has
not been more in his dispraise than in his favour. Such is the man, that
I think I must have been faulty, and ought to take myself to account,
if I had not. But you think otherwise, I will not put you upon labouring
the proof, as you call it. My conduct must then have a faulty appearance
at least, and I will endeavour to rectify it. But of this I assure you,
that whatever interpretation my words were capable of, I intended not
any reserve to you. I wrote my heart at the time: if I had had thought
of disguising it, or been conscious that there was reason for doing
so, perhaps I had not given you the opportunity of remarking upon my
curiosity after his relations' esteem for me; nor upon my conditional
liking, and such-like. All I intended by the first, I believe, I
honestly told you at the time. To that letter I therefore refer, whether
it make for me, or against me: and by the other, that I might bear in
mind, what it became a person of my sex and character to be and to
do, in such an unhappy situation, where the imputed love is thought an
undutiful, and therefore a criminal passion; and where the supported
object of it is a man of faulty morals too. And I am sure you will
excuse my desire of appearing at those times the person I ought to be;
had I no other view in it but to merit the continuance of your good
opinion.
But that I may acquit myself of having reserves--O, my dear, I must here
break off--!