LOUISA GRENVILLE.
LETTER LVII.
TO Miss GRENVILLE.
Oh, my Louisa! how is the style of your letters altered! Is this change (not improvement) owing to your attachment to Mr. Spencer? Can love have wrought this difference? If it has, may it be a stranger to my bosom!—for it has ceased to make my Louisa amiable!—she, who was once all tenderness—all softness! who fondly soothed my distresses, and felt for weakness which she never knew—
"It is not friendly, 'tis not maidenly;
Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it,
Though I alone do feel the injury—"
you, to whom I have freely exposed all the failings of my wayward heart! in whose bosom I have reposed all its tumultuous beatings!—all its anxieties!—Oh, Louisa! can you forget my confidence in you, which would not permit me to conceal even my errors? Why do you then join with men in scorning your friend? You say, my father has now no power over me, even if he could form the idea of using power. Alas! you have all too much power over me! you have the power of rendering me forever miserable, either by your persuasions to consign myself to eternal wretchedness; or by my inexorableness, as you call it, in flying in the face of persons so dear to me!
How cruel it is in you to arraign the conduct of one to whose character you are a stranger! What has the man, who, unfortunately both for himself and me, has been too much in my thoughts; what has he done, that you should so decisively pronounce him to be inconstant, and forgetful of those who seemed so dear to him? Why is the delicacy of your favourite to be so much commended for his forbearance till the year of mourning was near expired? And what proof that another may not be actuated by the same delicate motive?
But I will have done with these painful interrogatories; they only help to wound my bosom, even more than you have done.
My good uncle is better.—You have wrung my heart—and, harsh and unbecoming as it may seem in your eyes, I will not return to Woodley-vale, till I am assured I shall not receive any more persecutions on his account. Would he be content with my esteem, he may easily entitle himself to it by his still further forbearance.