Don’t let my intelligence, which is undoubted, grieve you over-much.  Try some way to move the wretch.  It must be done by touching his generosity:  he has that in some perfection.  But how in this case to move it, is beyond my power or skill to prescribe.  God bless you, my dearest Pamela!  You shall be my only sister.  And I will never own my brother, if he be so base to your superlative merit.  Adieu once more, from your sister and friend, B. DAVERS.

LETTER LXXI

MY DEAREST LADY,

A thousand thanks for your kind, your truly sisterly letter and advice.  Mr. B. is just returned from a tour to Portsmouth, with the Countess, I believe, but am not sure.

Here I am forced to leave off.

Let me scratch through this last surmise.  It seems she was not with him.  This is some comfort.

He is very kind:  and Billy not being well when he came in, my grief passed off without blame.  He had said many tender things to me; but added, that if I gave myself so much uneasiness every time the child ailed any thing, he would hire the nurse to overlay him.  Bless me.  Madam! what hard-hearted shocking things are these men capable of saying!—­The farthest from their hearts, indeed; so they had need—­For he was as glad of the child’s being better as I could be.

In the morning he went out in the chariot for about an hour, and returned in a good humour, saying twenty agreeable things to me, which makes me so proud, and so pleased!

He is gone out again.

Could I but find this matter happily conquered, for his own soul’s sake!—­But he seems, by what your ladyship mentions, to have carried this polygamy point with the lady.

Can I live with him.  Madam—­ought I—­if this be the case?  I have it under his hand, that the laws of his country were sufficient to deter him from that practice.  But alas! he knew not this countess then!

But here I must break off.

He is returned, and coming up.  “Go into my bosom for the present, O letter dedicated to dear Lady Davers—­Come to my hand the play employment, so unsuited to my present afflicted mind!”—­Here he comes!

O, Madam! my heart is almost broken!—­Just now Mr. B. tells me, that the Countess Dowager and the Viscountess, her sister, are to be here to see my Billy, and to drink tea with me, this very afternoon!

I was all confusion when he told me this.  I looked around and around, and upon every thing but him.

“Will not my friends be welcome, Pamela?” said he sternly.

“O yes, very welcome!  But I have these wretched vapours so, that I wish I might be excused—­I wish I might be allowed to take an airing in the chariot for two or three hours; for I shall not be fit to be seen by such—­ladies,” said I, half out of breath.

“You’ll be fit to be seen by nobody, my dear, if you go on thus.  But, do as you please.”