I will own to you, my dear, I every hour have more dread of this marriage:  his present situation has brought his faults into full light.  Captain Clayton, with little more than his commission, was modest, humble, affable to his inferiors, polite to all the world; and I fancied him possessed of those more active virtues, which I supposed the smallness of his fortune prevented from appearing.  ’Tis with pain I see that Sir George, with a splendid income, is avaricious, selfish, proud, vain, and profuse; lavish to every caprice of vanity and ostentation which regards himself, coldly inattentive to the real wants of others.

Is this a character to make your Emily happy?  We were not formed for each other:  no two minds were ever so different; my happiness is in friendship, in the tender affections, in the sweets of dear domestic life; his in the idle parade of affluence, in dress, in equipage, in all that splendor, which, whilst it excites envy, is too often the mark of wretchedness.

Shall I say more?  Marriage is seldom happy where there is a great disproportion of fortune.  The lover, after he loses that endearing character in the husband, which in common minds I am afraid is not long, begins to reflect how many more thousands he might have expected; and perhaps suspects his mistress of those interested motives in marrying, of which he now feels his own heart capable.  Coldness, suspicion, and mutual want of esteem and confidence, follow of course.

I will come back with you to Silleri this evening; I have no happiness but when I am with you.  Mrs. Melmoth is so fond of Sir George, she is eternally persecuting me with his praises; she is extremely mortified at this delay, and very angry at the manner in which I behave upon it.

Come to us directly, my dear Bell, and rejoice with your faithful

          Emily Montague.

LETTER 31.

To Miss Montague, at Quebec.

I congratulate you, my dear; you will at least have the pleasure of being five or six months longer your own mistress; which, in my opinion, when one is not violently in love, is a consideration worth attending to.  You will also have time to see whether you like any body else better; and you know you can take him if you please at last.

Send him up to his regiment at Montreal with the Melmoths; stay the winter with me, flirt with somebody else to try the strength of your passion, and, if it holds out against six months absence, and the attention of an agreable fellow, I think you may safely venture to marry him.

A propos to flirting, have you seen Colonel Rivers?  He has not been here these two days.  I shall begin to be jealous of this little impertinent Mademoiselle Clairaut.  Adieu!

      Yours,
          A. Fermor.

Rivers is absurd.  I have a mighty foolish letter from him; he is rambling about the country, buying estates:  he had better have been here, playing the fool with us; if I knew how to write to him I would tell him so, but he is got out of the range of human beings, down the river, Heaven knows where; he says a thousand civil things to you, but I will bring the letter with me to save the trouble of repeating them.