I have been ill of a slight fever, but am now perfectly recovered.  Sir George and Mr. Melmoth are well, and very impatient to see you here.

    Adieu! my dear. 
      Your affectionate
          E. Melmoth.

LETTER 44.

To Mrs. Melmoth, at Montreal.

Silleri, Nov. 20.

I have a thousand reasons, my dearest Madam, for intreating you to excuse my staying some time longer at Quebec.  I have the sincerest esteem for Sir George, and am not insensible of the force of our engagements; but do not think his being there a reason for my coming:  the kind of suspended state, to say no more, in which those engagements now are, call for a delicacy in my behaviour to him, which is so difficult to observe without the appearance of affectation, that his absence relieves me from a very painful kind of restraint:  for the same reason, ’tis impossible for me to come up at the time he does, if I do come, even though Miss Fermor should accompany me.

A moment’s reflexion will convince you of the propriety of my staying here till his mother does me the honor again to approve his choice; or till our engagement is publicly known to be at an end.  Mrs. Clayton is a prudent mother, and a woman of the world, and may consider that Sir George’s situation is changed since she consented to his marriage.

I am not capricious; but I will own to you, that my esteem for Sir George is much lessened by his behaviour since his last return from New-York:  he mistakes me extremely, if he supposes he has the least additional merit in my eyes from his late acquisition of fortune:  on the contrary, I now see faults in him which were concealed by the mediocrity of his situation before, and which do not promise happiness to a heart like mine, a heart which has little taste for the false glitter of life, and the most lively one possible for the calm real delights of friendship, and domestic felicity.

Accept my sincerest congratulations on your return of health; and believe me,

  My dearest Madam,
    Your obliged and affectionate
          Emily Montague.

LETTER 45.

To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Silleri, Nov. 23.

I have been seeing the last ship go out of the port, Lucy; you have no notion what a melancholy sight it is:  we are now left to ourselves, and shut up from all the world for the winter:  somehow we seem so forsaken, so cut off from the rest of human kind, I cannot bear the idea:  I sent a thousand sighs and a thousand tender wishes to dear England, which I never loved so much as at this moment.

Do you know, my dear, I could cry if I was not ashamed?  I shall not absolutely be in spirits again this week.

’Tis the first time I have felt any thing like bad spirits in Canada:  I followed the ship with my eyes till it turned Point Levi, and, when I lost sight of it, felt as if I had lost every thing dear to me on earth.  I am not particular:  I see a gloom on every countenance; I have been at church, and think I never saw so many dejected faces in my life.