I am so much convinced that you must be in the right in all you think
fit to insist upon, that I shall for the future mistrust myself; and,
if it be possible, whenever I differ with you, take an hour's time for
recollection, before I give way to that vehemence, which an opposition,
to which I have not been accustomed, too often gives me.
All this is mighty good, Sir: But to what does it tend?
Why, Madam, when I came to consider what you had proposed, as to the
terms of reconciliation with your friends; and when I recollected that
you had always referred to yourself to approve or reject me, according
to my merits or demerits; I plainly saw, that it was rather a
condescension in you, that you were pleased to ask my consent to those
terms,than that you were imposing a new law: and I now, Madam, beg your
pardon for my impatience: whatever terms you think proper to come into
with your relations, which will enable you to honour me with the
conditional effect of your promise to me, to these be pleased to
consent: and if I lose you, insupportable as that thought is to me; yet,
as it must be by my own fault, I ought to thank myself for
it.
What think you, Miss Howe?--Do you believe he can have any view in
this?--I cannot see any he could have; and I thought it best, as he put
it in so right a manner, to appear not to doubt the sincerity of his
confession, and to accept of it as sincere.
He then read to me part of Lady Betty's letter; turning down the
beginning, which was a little too severe upon him, he said, for my eye:
and I believe, by the style, the remainder of it was in a corrective
strain.
It was too plain, I told him, that he must have great faults, that none
of his relations could write to him, but with a mingled censure for some
bad action.
And it is as plain, my dearest creature, said he, that you, who know
not of any such faults, but by surmise, are equally ready to condemn
me.--Will not charity allow you to infer, that their charges are no
better grounded?--And that my principal fault has been carelessness of
my character, and too little solicitude to clear myself, when aspersed?
Which, I do assure you, is the case.
Lady Betty, in her letter, expresses herself in the most obliging manner
in relation to me. 'She wishes him so to behave, as to encourage me to
make him soon happy. She desires her compliments to me; and expresses
her impatience to see, as her niece, so celebrated a lady [those are her
high words]. She shall take it for an honour, she says, to be put into
a way to oblige me. She hopes I will not too long delay the ceremony;
because that performed, will be to her, and to Lord M. and Lady Sarah, a
sure pledge of her nephew's merits and good behaviour.'
She says, 'she was always sorry to hear of the hardships I had met with
on his account: that he will be the most ungrateful of men, if he make it
not all up to me: and that she thinks it incumbent upon all their family
to supply to me the lost favour of my own: and, for her part, nothing of
that kind, she bids him assure me, shall be wanting.'
Her ladyship observes, 'That the treatment he had received from my
family would have been much more unaccountable than it was, with such
natural and accidental advantages as he had, had it not been owing
to his own careless manners. But she hopes that he will convince the
Harlowe family that they had thought worse of him than he had deserved;
since now it was in his power to establish his character for ever. This
she prays to God to enable him to do, as well for his own honour, as for
the honour of their house,' was the magnificent word.
She concludes, with 'desiring to be informed of our nuptials the moment
they are celebrated, that she may be with the earliest in felicitating
me on the happy occasion.'
But her Ladyship gives me no direct invitation to attend her before the
marriage: which I might have expected from what he had told me.
He then shewed me part of Miss Montague's more sprightly letter,
'congratulating him upon the honour he had obtained, of the confidence
of so admirable a lady.' These are her words. Confidence, my dear!
Nobody, indeed, as you say, will believe otherwise, were they to be
told the truth: and you see that Miss Montague (and all his family, I
suppose) think that the step I have taken an extraordinary one. 'She
also wishes for his speedy nuptials; and to see her new cousin at M.
Hall: as do Lord M. she tells him, and her sister; and in general all
the well-wishers of their family.
'Whenever this happy day shall be passed, she proposes, she says, to
attend me, and to make one in my train to M. Hall, if his Lordship shall
continue as ill of the gout as he is at present. But that, should he get
better, he will himself attend me, she is sure, and conduct me thither;
and afterwards quit either of his three seats to us, till we shall be
settled to our mind.'
This young lady says nothing in excuse for not meeting me on the road,
or St. Alban's, as he had made me expect she would: yet mentions her
having been indisposed. Mr. Lovelace had also told me, that Lord M. was
ill of the gout; which Miss Montague's letter confirms.
But why did not the man show me these letters last night? Was he afraid
of giving me too much pleasure?