I would then have given her an account of the trial you stood with your friends:  your own previous resolutions of marriage, had she honoured you with the requested four words:  all your family’s earnestness to have the honour of her alliance:  and the application of your two cousins to Miss Howe, by general consent, for that young lady’s interest with her:  but, having just touched upon these topics, she cut me short, saying, that was a cause before another tribunal:  Miss Howe’s letters to her were upon the subject; and as she would write her thoughts to her as soon as she was able.

I then attempted more particularly to clear you of having any hand in the vile Sinclair’s officious arrest; a point she had the generosity to wish you cleared of:  and, having mentioned the outrageous letter you had written to me on this occasion, she asked, If I had that letter about me?

I owned I had.

She wished to see it.

This puzzled me horribly:  for you must needs think that most of the free things, which, among us rakes, pass for wit and spirit, must be shocking stuff to the ears or eyes of persons of delicacy of that sex:  and then such an air of levity runs through thy most serious letters; such a false bravery, endeavouring to carry off ludicrously the subjects that most affect thee; that those letters are generally the least fit to be seen, which ought to be most to thy credit.

Something like this I observed to her; and would fain have excused myself from showing it:  but she was so earnest, that I undertook to read some parts of it, resolving to omit the most exceptionable.

I know thou’lt curse me for that; but I thought it better to oblige her than to be suspected myself; and so not have it in my power to serve thee with her, when so good a foundation was laid for it; and when she knows as bad of thee as I can tell her.

Thou rememberest the contents, I suppose, of thy furious letter.* Her remarks upon the different parts of it, which I read to her, were to the following effect: 

* See Letter XII. of this volume.

Upon the last two lines, All undone! undone, by Jupiter!  Zounds, Jack, what shall I do now? a curse upon all my plots and contrivances! thus she expressed herself: 

’O how light, how unaffected with the sense of its own crimes, is the heart that could dictate to the pen this libertine froth?’

The paragraph which mentions the vile arrest affected her a good deal.

In the next I omitted thy curse upon thy relations, whom thou wert gallanting:  and read on the seven subsequent paragraphs down to thy execrable wish; which was too shocking to read to her.  What I read produced the following reflections from her: 

’The plots and contrivances which he curses, and the exultings of the wicked wretches on finding me out, show me that all his guilt was premeditated:  nor doubt I that his dreadful perjuries, and inhuman arts, as he went along, were to pass for fine stratagems; for witty sport; and to demonstrate a superiority of inventive talents!—­O my cruel, cruel brother! had it not been for thee, I had not been thrown upon so pernicious and so despicable a plotter!—­But proceed, Sir; pray proceed.’