My grandmamma withdrew her fond arms:  Take her, take her, said she, each in turn:  but I think I never can part with her again.

My uncle saluted me, and bid me very kindly welcome home—­so did every one.

How can I return the obligations which the love of all my friends lays upon me?  To be good, to be grateful, is not enough; since that one ought to be for one’s own sake.  Yet how can I be even grateful to them with half a heart?  Ah, Lady G——­, you bid me be free in my confessions.  You promise to look my letters over before you read them to any body; and to mark passages proper to be kept to yourself—­Pray do.

Mr. Greville and Mr. Fenwick were here separately, an hour ago:  I thanked them for their civility on the road, and not ungraciously, as Mr. Greville told my uncle, as to him.  He was not, he said, without hopes, yet; since I knew not how to be ungrateful.  Mr. Greville builds, as he always did, a merit on his civility; and by that means sinks, in the narrower lover, the claim he might otherwise make to the title of the generous neighbour.

***

Miss Orme has just been here.  She could not help throwing in a word for her brother.

You will guess, my dear Lady G——­, at the subject of our conversations here, and what they will be, morning, noon, and night, for a week to come.  My grandmamma is better in health than I have known her for a year or two past.  The health of people in years can mend but slowly; and they are slow to acknowledge it in their own favour.  My grandmamma, however, allows that she is better within these few days past; but attributes the amendment to her Harriet’s return.

How do they all bless, revere, extol, your noble brother!—­How do they wish—­And how do they regret—­you know what—­Yet how ready are they to applaud your Harriet, if she can hold her magnanimity, in preferring the happiness of Clementina to her own!—­My grandmamma and aunt are of opinion, that I should; and they praise me for the generosity of my effort, whether the superior merits of the man will or will not allow me to succeed in it.  But my uncle, my Lucy, and my Nancy, from their unbounded love of me, think a little, and but a little, narrower; and, believing it will go hard with me, say, It is hard.  My uncle, in particular, says, The very pretension is flight and nonsense:  but, however, if the girl, added he, can parade away her passion for an object so worthy, with all my heart:  it will be but just, that the romancing elevations, which so often drive headstrong girls into difficulties, should now and then help a more discreet one out of them.