M. Pert creature! [rising again]----We shall quarrel, I see!--There's
no----
D. Once more, dear Madam, I beg your excuse. I will attend in silence.
--Pray, Madam, sit down again--pray do [she sat down.]--May I see the
letter?
No; there are some things in it you won't like.--Your temper is known, I
find, to be unhappy. But nothing bad against you; intimations, on the
contrary, that you shall be the better for him, if you oblige him.
Not a living soul but the Harlowes, I said, thought me ill-tempered: and
I was contented that they should, who could do as they had done by the
most universally acknowledged sweetness in the world.
Here we broke out a little; but at last she read me some of the passages
in the letter. But not the most mightily ridiculous: yet I could hardly
keep my countenance neither, especially when she came to that passage
which mentions his sound health; and at which she stopped; she best knew
why--But soon resuming: