I may send to you, although you are forbid to write to me; may I
not?--For that is not a correspondence (is it?) where letters are not
answered.
I am strangely at a loss what to think of this man. He is a perfect
Proteus. I can but write according to the shape he assumes at the time.
Don't think me the changeable person, I beseech you, if in one letter I
contradict what I wrote in another; nay, if I seem to contradict what
I said in the same letter: for he is a perfect camelion; or rather more
variable than the camelion; for that, it is said, cannot assume the
red and the white; but this man can. And though black seems to be
his natural colour, yet has he taken great pains to make me think him
nothing but white.
But you shall judge of him as I proceed. Only, if I any where appear
to you to be credulous, I beg you to set me right: for you are a
stander-by, as you say in a former*--Would to Heaven I were not to play!
for I think, after all, I am held to a desperate game.
* See Letter VIII. of this volume.
Before I could finish my last to you, he sent up twice more to beg
admittance. I returned for answer, that I would see him at my own time:
I would neither be invaded nor prescribed to.
Considering how we parted, and my delaying his audience, as he sometimes
calls it, I expected him to be in no very good humour, when I admitted
of his visit; and by what I wrote, you will conclude that I was not. Yet
mine soon changed, when I saw his extreme humility at his entrance, and
heard what he had to say.
I have a letter, Madam, said he, from Lady Betty Lawrance, and another
from my cousin Charlotte. But of these more by-and-by. I came now to
make my humble acknowledgement to you upon the arguments that passed
between us so lately.