less fervent;
>>> for you would have blamed me, I know, for the free-
     dom of some of my expressions. [Execrations, if
     you please.] And when I had gone a good way
     in the second, the change in your prospects, on his
     communicating to you Miss Montague’s letter, and
     his better behaviour, occasioning a change in your
     mind, I laid that aside also.  And in this uncer-
     tainty, thought I would wait to see the issue of
     affairs between you before I wrote again; believing
     that all would soon be decided one way or other.

          I had still, perhaps, held this resolution, [as every
     appearance, according to your letters, was more and
     more promising,] had not the two passed days fur-
     nished me with intelligence which it highly imports
     you to know.

          But I must stop here, and take a little walk, to
     try to keep down that just indignation which rises
     to my pen, when I am about to relate to you what
     I must communicate.

***

     I am not my own mistress enough—­then my

mother—­always up and down—­and watching as if
I were writing to a fellow.  But I will try if I can
contain myself in tolerable bounds.

         The women of the house where you are—­O my
     dear, the women of the house—­but you never
     thought highly of them—­so it cannot be very sur-
>>> prising—­nor would you have staid so long with
     them, had not the notion of removing to one of your
     own, made you less uneasy, and less curious about
     their characters, and behaviour.  Yet I could now
     wish, that you had been less reserved among them
>>> —­But I tease you—­In short, my dear, you are
     certainly in a devilish house!—­Be assured that the
     woman is one of the vilest women—­nor does
     she go to you by her right name—­[Very true!]—­
     Her name is not Sinclair, nor is the street she lives
     in Dover-street.  Did you never go out by your-
     self, and discharge the coach or chair, and return
>>> by another coach or chair?  If you did, [yet I
     don’t remember that you ever wrote to me, that
     you did,] you would never have found your way to
     the vile house, either by the woman’s name, Sin-
     clair, or by the street’s name, mentioned by that
     Doleman in his letter about the lodgings.*

* Vol.  III.  Letters XXXVIII. and XXXIX.

         The wretch might indeed have held out these
     false lights a little more excusably, had the house
     been an honest house; and had his end only been
     to prevent mischief from your brother.  But this
     contrivance was antecedent, as I think, to your
     brother’s project; so that no excuse can be made
>>> for his intentions at the time—­the man, whatever he
     may now intend, was certainly then, even then, a
     villain in his heart.