I am sure it was not your intention to take your future husband with you to the little island to make him look weak and silly among those of your relations who never before had seen him.  Yet do you think it possible for them (however prepared and resolved they may be to like him) to forbear smiling at him, when they see him suffering under your whimsical penances?  A modest man should no more be made little in his own eyes, than in the eyes of others.  If he be, he will have a diffidence, which will give an awkwardness to every thing he says or does; and this will be no more to the credit of your choice than to that of the approbation he meets with from your friends, or to his own credit.

I love an obliging, and even an humble, deportment in a man to the woman he addresses.  It is a mark of his politeness, and tends to give her that opinion of herself, which it may be supposed bashful merit wants to be inspired with.  But if the woman exacts it with an high hand, she shows not either her own politeness or gratitude; although I must confess she does her courage.  I gave you expectations that I would be very serious with you.

O my dear, that it had been my lot (as I was not permitted to live single,) to have met with a man by whom I could have acted generously and unreservedly!

Mr. Lovelace, it is now plain, in order to have a pretence against me, taxed my behaviour to him with stiffness and distance.  You, at one time, thought me guilty of some degree of prudery.  Difficult situations should be allowed for:  which often make seeming occasions for censure unavoidable.  I deserved not blame from him who made mine difficult.  And you, my dear, had I any other man to deal with, or had he but half the merit which Mr. Hickman has, would have found that my doctrine on this subject should have governed my practice.

But to put myself out of the question—­I’ll tell you what I should think, were I an indifferent by-stander, of those high airs of your’s, in return for Mr. Hickman’s humble demeanour.  ’The lady thinks of having the gentleman, I see plainly, would I say.  But I see as plainly, that she has a very great indifference to him.  And to what may this indifference be owing?  To one or all of these considerations, no doubt:  that she receives his addresses rather from motives of convenience than choice:  that she thinks meanly of his endowments and intellects; at least more highly of her own:  or, she has not the generosity to use that power with moderation, which his great affection for her puts into her hands.’

How would you like, my dear, to have any of these things said?

Then to give but the shadow of a reason for free-livers and free speakers to say, or to imagine, that Miss Howe gives her hand to a man who has no reason to expect any share in her heart, I am sure you would not wish that such a thing should be so much as supposed.  Then all the regard from you to come afterwards; none to be shown before; must, should I think, be capable of being construed as a compliment to the husband, made at the expense of the wife’s and even of the sex’s delicacy!