“Yes, my dear, your Emily has been wretched, without daring to confess it even to you:  I was ashamed of owning I had entered into such engagements with a man whom I had never loved, though I had for a short time mistaken esteem for a greater degree of affection than my heart ever really knew.  How fatal, my dear Bell, is this mistake to half our sex, and how happy am I to have discovered mine in time!

“I have scarce yet asked myself what I intend; but I think it will be most prudent to return to England in the first ship, and retire to a relation of my mother’s in the country, where I can live with decency on my little fortune.

“Whatever is my fate, no situation can be equally unhappy with that of being wife to a man for whom I have not even the slightest friendship or esteem, for whose conversation I have not the least taste, and who, if I know him, would for ever think me under an obligation to him for marrying me.

“I have the pleasure to see I give no pain to his heart, by a step which has relieved mine from misery:  his feelings are those of wounded vanity, not of love.

      “Adieu!  Your
        Emily Montague.”

I have no patience with relations, Lucy; this sweet girl has been two years wretched under the bondage her uncle’s avarice (for he foresaw Sir George’s acquisition, though she did not) prepared for her.  Parents should chuse our company, but never even pretend to direct our choice; if they take care we converse with men of honor only, ’tis impossible we can chuse amiss:  a conformity of taste and sentiment alone can make marriage happy, and of that none but the parties concerned can judge.

By the way, I think long engagements, even between persons who love, extremely unfavorable to happiness:  it is certainly right to be long enough acquainted to know something of each other’s temper; but ’tis bad to let the first fire burn out before we come together; and when we have once resolved, I have no notion of delaying a moment.

If I should ever consent to marry Fitzgerald, and he should not fly for a licence before I had finished the sentence, I would dismiss him if there was not another lover to be had in Canada.

      Adieu! 
        Your faithful
          A. Fermor.

My Emily is now free as air; a sweet little bird escaped from the gilded cage.  Are you not glad of it, Lucy?  I am amazingly.

LETTER 66.

To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Quebec, Feb. 11.

Would one think it possible, Lucy, that Sir George should console himself for the loss of all that is lovely in woman, by the sordid prospect of acquiring, by an interested marriage, a little more of that wealth of which he has already much more than he can either enjoy or become?  By what wretched motives are half mankind influenced in the most important action of their lives!