Why mention you, my dear, the saving you from mortifications, who have
gone off with a man? What a poor pride is it to stand upon any thing
else!
I dare not open my lips in your favour. Nobody dare. Your letter must
stand by itself. This has caused me to send it to Harlowe-place. Expect
therefore great severity. May you be enabled to support the lot you have
drawn! O my dear! how unhappy have you made every body! Can you expect
to be happy? Your father wishes you had never been born. Your poor
mother--but why should I afflict you? There is now no help!--You must be
changed, indeed, if you are not very unhappy yourself in the reflections
your thoughtful mind must suggest to you.
You must now make the best of your lot. Yet not married, it seems!
It is in your power, you say, to perform whatever you shall undertake
to do. You may deceive yourself: you hope that your reputation and the
favour of your friends may be retrieved. Never, never, both, I doubt,
if either. Every offended person (and that is all who loved you, and are
related to you) must join to restore you: when can these be of one mind
in a case so notoriously wrong?
It would be very grievous, you say, to be precipitated upon measures
that may make the desirable reconciliation more difficult. Is it now, my
dear, a time for you to be afraid of being precipitated? At present,
if ever, there can be no thought of reconciliation. The upshot of your
precipitation must first be seen. There may be murder yet, as far as we
know. Will the man you are with part willingly with you? If not, what
may be the consequence? If he will--Lord bless me! what shall we
think of his reasons for it?--I will fly this thought. I know your
purity--But, my dear, are you not out of all protection?--Are you not
unmarried?--Have you not (making your daily prayers useless) thrown
yourself into temptation? And is not the man the most wicked of
plotters?
You have hitherto, you say, (and I think, my dear, with an air
unbecoming to your declared penitence,) no fault to find with the
behaviour of a man from whom every evil was apprehended: like Caesar to
the Roman augur, which I heard you tell of, who had bid him beware the
Ides of March: the Ides of March, said Caesar, seeing the augur among
the crowd, as he marched in state to the senate-house, from which he
was never to return alive, the Ides of March are come. But they are not
past, the augur replied. Make the application, my dear: may you be able
to make this reflection upon his good behaviour to the last of your
knowledge of him! May he behave himself better to you, than he ever did
to any body else over whom he had power! Amen!
No answer, I beseech you. I hope your messenger will not tell any body
that I have written to you. And I dare say you will not show what I
have written to Mr. Lovelace--for I have written with the less reserve,
depending upon your prudence.
You have my prayers.
My Dolly knows not that I write: nobody does*; not even Mr. Hervey.
* Notwithstanding what Mrs. Hervey here says, it will be hereafter seen
that this severe letter was written in private concert with the
implacable Arabella.
Dolly would have several times written: but having defended your fault
with heat, and with a partiality that alarmed us, (such a fall as
your's, my dear, must be alarming to all parents,) she has been
forbidden, on pain of losing our favour for ever: and this at your
family's request, as well as by her father's commands.
You have the poor girl's hourly prayers, I will, however, tell you,
though she knows not what I do, as well as those of
Your truly afflicted aunt, D. HERVEY.