been given by me, of all creatures; since I am unequal, utterly unequal, to the circumstances to which my inconsideration has reduced me?—­What!  I to challenge a man for a husband!—­I to exert myself to quicken the delayer in his resolutions! and, having as you think lost an opportunity, to begin to try to recall it, as from myself, and for myself! to threaten him, as I may say, into the marriage state!—­O my dear! if this be right to be done, how difficult is it, where modesty and self (or where pride, if you please) is concerned, to do that right? or, to express myself in your words, to be father, mother, uncle, to myself!—­especially where one thinks a triumph over one is intended.

You say, you have tried Mrs. Norton’s weight with my mother—­bad as the returns are which my application by Mr. Hickman has met with, you tell me, ’that you have not acquainted me with all the bad, nor now, perhaps, ever will.’  But why so, my dear?  What is the bad, what can be the bad, which now you will never tell me of?—­What worse, than renounce me! and for ever!  ’My uncle, you say, believes me ruined:  he declares that he can believe every thing bad of a creature who could run away with a man:  and they have all made a resolution not to stir an inch in my favour; no, not to save my life!’—­Have you worse than this, my dear, behind?—­Surely my father has not renewed his dreadful malediction!—­Surely, if so, my mother has not joined in it!  Have my uncles given their sanction, and made it a family act?  And themselves thereby more really faulty, than ever they suppose me to be, though I the cause of that greater fault in them?—­What, my dear, is the worst, that you will leave for ever unrevealed?

O Lovelace! why comest thou not just now, while these black prospects are before me?  For now, couldst thou look into my heart, wouldst thou see a distress worthy of thy barbarous triumph!

***

I was forced to quit my pen.  And you say you have tried Mrs. Norton’s weight with my mother?

What is done cannot be remedied:  but I wish you had not taken a step of this importance to me without first consulting me.  Forgive me, my dear, but I must tell you that that high-soul’d and noble friendship which you have ever avowed with so obliging and so uncommon a warmth, although it has been always the subject of my grateful admiration, has been often the ground of my apprehension, because of its unbridled fervour.

Well, but now to look forward, you are of opinion that I must be his:  and that I cannot leave him with reputation to myself, whether with or without his consent.  I must, if so, make the best of the bad matter.

He went out in the morning; intending not to return to dinner, unless (as he sent me word) I would admit him to dine with me.

I excused myself.  The man, whose anger is now to be of such high importance to me, was, it seems, displeased.