“15th April.

“MY DEAR TOM—­I shall begin a letter to you now, and fill it up as a sort of a diary; as it is the best plan, I think, to narrate circumstances as they actually take place.  It is unpleasant to say anything against my mother, the more so as I believe that she thinks she has been doing right, and has my interest sincerely at heart:  she appears to consider that an alliance with people of rank cannot be purchased too dear, and that every attempt is justifiable to secure for me such an advantage.  Little does she know me.  If she forgets, I never shall, that I am the daughter of a Greenwich pensioner, and never would ally myself with those whose relations would look upon me as a disgrace to their family.  No, Tom; even if I were so heedless as to allow my affections to be enthralled, I would at any sacrifice refuse to enter into a family much beyond my condition.  I have thought of this often, and I confess that I am sometimes unhappy.  I have been brought up and educated above my situation in life, and I do not think I ever could marry a person who was not more refined and educated than those who are really and truly my equals, But as, at the same time, I never will enter into a family who might look down upon my parentage, I presume your little Virginia must remain unmarried.  If so, I am content—­I have no wish to alter my present condition.  I am happy and respected; and with the exception of the trifling annoyances which we all must expect and must submit to, I have no reason to be dissatisfied; on the contrary, I have to be grateful for many blessings, and I trust that I am so.  My poor mother is the cause of all my present vexations.  She tells me that my beauty, as she is partially pleased to call it, is sufficient for my aspiring to the hand of a duke, and that it will be my own fault if I do not make a high connection.  Every night she has been overwhelming me with alternate reproaches and entreaties to permit the attentions of the gay gentleman who is now lodging at our house, stating that it was on my account only that he took the apartments, and that, if I play my cards well, he will be caught in his own trap, which, I presume, is as much as to say that he came here with different intentions, and finding that he cannot succeed, will secure his intended prize or victim by marriage rather than not obtain her at all.  Very flattering, truly! and this is the man to whom my mother would induce me to confide my future happiness—­a man who, independent of his want of probity, is a fool into the bargain.  But the persecution on his part and on that of my mother now becomes so annoying that I have requested Mrs. St. Felix to speak to Mr. Sommerville the tutor, who, if he does his duty—­and I have every reason to believe that he will do so—­will take some measures to remove his pupil from our house.