we might have been, when I consider how far we are from it in reality.  Alas! how can you talk of defying fortune; nobody lives without it, and therefore why should you imagine you could?  I know not how my brother comes to be so well informed as you say, but I am certain he knows the utmost of the injuries you have received from her.  ’Tis not possible she should have used you worse than he says.  We have had another debate, but much more calmly.  ’Twas just upon his going up to town, and perhaps he thought it not fit to part in anger.  Not to wrong him, he never said to me (whate’er he thought) a word in prejudice of you in your own person, and I never heard him accuse any but your fortune and my indiscretion.  And whereas I did expect that (at least in compliment to me) he should have said we had been a couple of fools well met, he says by his troth he does not blame you, but bids me not deceive myself to think you have any great passion for me.

If you have done with the first part of Cyrus, I should be glad Mr. Hollingsworth had it, because I mentioned some such thing in my last to my Lady; but there is no haste of restoring the other unless she should send to me for it, which I believe she will not.  I have a third tome here against you have done with that second; and to encourage you, let me assure you that the more you read of them you will like them still better.  Oh, me! whilst I think on’t, let me ask you one question seriously, and pray resolve me truly;—­do I look so stately as people apprehend?  I vow to you I made nothing on’t when Sir Emperor said so, because I had no great opinion of his judgment, but Mr. Freeman makes me mistrust myself extremely, not that I am sorry I did appear so to him (since it kept me from the displeasure of refusing an offer which I do not perhaps deserve), but that it is a scurvy quality in itself, and I am afraid I have it in great measure if I showed any of it to him, for whom I have so much respect and esteem.  If it be so you must needs know it; for though my kindness will not let me look so upon you, you can see what I do to other people.  And, besides, there was a time when we ourselves were indifferent to one another;—­did I do so then, or have I learned it since?  For God’s sake tell me, that I may try to mend it.  I could wish, too, that you would lay your commands on me to forbear fruit:  here is enough to kill 1000 such as I am, and so extremely good, that nothing but your power can secure me; therefore forbid it me, that I may live to be

Your.

Letter 25.—­Dorothy’s dissertations on love and marriage are always amusing in their demureness.  Who Cousin Peters was we cannot now say, but she was evidently a relation and a gossip.  The episode concerning Mistress Harrison and the Queen is explained by the following quotation from the autobiography of the Countess of Warwick.