In the first place, as to your reproofs, thus shall I discharge myself of that part of my subject. Is it likely, think you, that I should avoid deserving them now-and-then, occasionally, when I admire the manner in which you give me your rebukes, and love you the better for them? And when you are so well entitled to give them? For what faults can you possibly have, unless your relations are so kind as to find you a few to keep their many in countenance?—But they are as king to me in this, as to you; for I may venture to affirm, That any one who should read your letters, and would say you were right, would not on reading mine, condemn me for them quite wrong.
Your resolution not to leave your father's house is right—if you can stay in it, and avoid being Solmes's wife.
I think you have answered Solmes's letter, as I should have answered it.—Will you not compliment me and yourself at once, by saying, that was right?
You have, in your letters to your uncle and the rest, done all that you ought to do. You are wholly guiltless of the consequence, be it what it will. To offer to give up your estate!—That would not I have done! You see this offer staggered them: they took time to consider of it. They made my heart ache in the time they took. I was afraid they would have taken you at your word: and so, but for shame, and for fear of Lovelace, I dare say they would. You are too noble for them. This, I repeat, is an offer I would not have made. Let me beg of you, my dear, never to repeat the temptation to them.
I freely own to you, that their usage of you upon it, and Lovelace's different treatment of you* in his letter received at the same time, would have made me his, past redemption. The duce take the man, I was going to say, for not having so much regard to his character and morals, as would have entirely justified such a step in a CLARISSA, persecuted as she is!
* See Letter XVIII.
I wonder not at your appointment with him. I may further touch upon some part of this subject by-and-by.
Pray—pray—I pray you now, my dearest friend, contrive to send your Betty Banes to me!—Does the Coventry Act extend to women, know ye?—The least I will do, shall be, to send her home well soused in and dragged through our deepest horsepond. I'll engage, if I get her hither, that she will keep the anniversary of her deliverance as long as she lives.
I wonder not at Lovelace's saucy answer, saucy as it really is.* If he loves you as he ought, he must be vexed at so great a disappointment. The man must have been a detestable hypocrite, I think, had he not shown his vexation. Your expectations of such a christian command of temper in him, in a disappointment of this nature especially, are too early by almost half a century in a man of his constitution. But nevertheless I am very far from blaming you for your resentment.
* See Letter XX.