I am delighted with your spirit, however. I expected it not from you Nor did they, I am sure. Nor would you, perhaps, have exerted it, if Lovelace's intelligence of Solmes's nursery-offices had not set you up. I wonder not that the wretch is said to love you the better for it. What an honour would it be to him to have such a wife? And he can be even with you when you are so. He must indeed be a savage, as you say.—Yet he is less to blame for his perseverance, than those of your own family, whom most you reverence for theirs.
It is well, as I have often said, that I have not such provocations and trials; I should perhaps long ago have taken your cousin Dolly's advice—yet dare I not to touch that key.—I shall always love the good girl for her tenderness to you.
I know not what to say of Lovelace; nor what to think of his promises, nor of his proposals to you. 'Tis certain that you are highly esteemed by all his family. The ladies are persons of unblemished honour. My Lord M. is also (as men and peers go) a man of honour. I could tell what to advise any other person in the world to do but you. So much expected from you!—Such a shining light!—Your quitting your father's house, and throwing yourself into the protection of a family, however honourable, that has a man in it, whose person, parts, declarations, and pretensions, will be thought to have engaged your warmest esteem;—methinks I am rather for advising that you should get privately to London; and not to let either him, or any body else but me, know where you are, till your cousin Morden comes.
As to going to your uncle's, that you must not do, if you can help it. Nor must you have Solmes, that's certain: Not only because of his unworthiness in every respect, but because of the aversion you have so openly avowed to him; which every body knows and talks of; as they do of your approbation of the other. For your reputation sake therefore, as well as to prevent mischief, you must either live single, or have Lovelace.
If you think of going to London, let me know; and I hope you will have time to allow me a further concert as to the manner of your getting away, and thither, and how to procure proper lodgings for you.
To obtain this time, you must palliate a little, and come into some seeming compromise, if you cannot do otherwise. Driven as you are driven, it will be strange if you are not obliged to part with a few of your admirable punctilio's.
You will observe from what I have written, that I have not succeeded with my mother.
I am extremely mortified and disappointed. We have had very strong debates upon it. But, besides the narrow argument of embroiling ourselves with other people's affairs, as above-mentioned, she will have it, that it is your duty to comply. She says, she was always of opinion that daughters should implicitly submit to the will of their parents in the great article of marriage; and that she governed herself accordingly in marrying my father; who at first was more the choice of her parents than her own.
This is what she argues in behalf of her favourite Hickman, as well as for Solmes in your case.
I must not doubt, but my mother always governed herself by this principle—because she says she did. I have likewise another reason to believe it; which you shall have, though it may not become me to give it—that they did not live so happily together, as one would hope people might do who married preferring each other at the time to the rest of the world.