Any body but Lovelace! interrupted my brother.--This, Madam, this, Sir,
is your meek daughter! This is Mrs. Norton's sweet child!--Well, Goody,
you may return to your own habitation. I am empowered to forbid you to
have any correspondence with this perverse girl for a month to come, as
you value the favour of our whole family, or of any individual of it.
And saying this, uncontradicted by any body, he himself shewed her
to the door,--no doubt, with all that air of cruel insult, which the
haughty rich can put on to the unhappy low, who have not pleased them.
So here, my dear Miss Howe, am I deprived of the advice of one of the
most prudent and conscientious women in the world, were I to have ever
so much occasion for it.
I might indeed write (as I presume, under your cover) and receive her
answers to what I should write. But should such a correspondence be
charged upon her, I know she would not be guilty of a falsehood for the
world, nor even of an equivocation: and should she own it after this
prohibition, she would forfeit my mother's favour for ever. And in my
dangerous fever, some time ago, I engaged my mother to promise me, that,
if I died before I could do any thing for the good woman, she would set
her above want for the rest of her life, should her eyes fail her, or
sickness befall her, and she could not provide for herself, as she now
so prettily does by her fine needle-works.
What measures will they fall upon next?--Will they not recede when they
find that it must be a rooted antipathy, and nothing else, that could
make a temper, not naturally inflexible, so sturdy?
Adieu, my dear. Be you happy!--To know that it is in your power to be
so, is all that seems wanting to make you so.