I am called upon for this letter, and have only time to assure your Lordship of my respect, and of the pleasure I always receive from your commands.  I have the honor to be,

    My Lord,
        Your Lordship’s, &c. 
          William Fermor.

LETTER 73.

To Miss Fermor.

Feb. 24, Eleven at night.

I have indeed, my dear, a pleasure in his conversation, to which words cannot do justice:  love itself is less tender and lively than my friendship for Rivers; from the first moment I saw him, I lost all taste for other conversation; even yours, amiable as you are, borrows its most prevailing charm from the pleasure of hearing you talk of him.

When I call my tenderness for him friendship, I do not mean either to paint myself as an enemy to tenderer sentiments, or him as one whom it is easy to see without feeling them:  all I mean is, that, as our situations make it impossible for us to think of each other except as friends, I have endeavored—­I hope with success—­to see him in no other light:  it is not in his power to marry without fortune, and mine is a trifle:  had I worlds, they should be his; but, I am neither so selfish as to desire, nor so romantic as to expect, that he should descend from the rank of life he has been bred in, and live lost to the world with me.

As to the impertinence of two or three women, I hear of it with perfect indifference:  my dear Rivers esteems me, he approves my conduct, and all else is below my care:  the applause of worlds would give me less pleasure than one smile of approbation from him.

I am astonished your father should know me so little, as to suppose me capable of being influenced even by you:  when I determined to refuse Sir George, it was from the feelings of my own heart alone; the first moment I saw Colonel Rivers convinced me my heart had till then been a stranger to true tenderness:  from that moment my life has been one continued struggle between my reason, which shewed me the folly as well as indecency of marrying one man when I so infinitely preferred another, and a false point of honor and mistaken compassion:  from which painful state, a concurrence of favorable accidents has at length happily relieved me, and left me free to act as becomes me.

Of this, my dear, be assured, that, though I have not the least idea of ever marrying Colonel Rivers, yet, whilst my sentiments for him continue what they are, I will never marry any other man.

I am hurt at what Mrs. Melmoth hinted in her letter to you, of Rivers having appeared to attach himself to me from vanity; she endeavors in vain to destroy my esteem for him:  you well know, he never did appear to attach himself to me; he is incapable of having done it from such a motive; but if he had, such delight have I in whatever pleases him, that I should with joy have sacrificed my own vanity to gratify his.