And in my last case, I, your Anna Howe, would exert myself, and either find you a private refuge, or resolve to share fortunes with you.
What a wretch! to be so easily answered by your reference to the arrival of your cousin Morden! But I am afraid that you was too scrupulous: for did he not resent that reference?
Could we have his account of the matter, I fancy, my dear, I should think you over nice, over delicate.* Had you laid hold of his acknowledged explicitness, he would have been as much in your power, as now you seem to be in his: you wanted not to be told, that the person who had been tricked into such a step as you had taken, must of necessity submit to many mortifications.
* The reader who has seen his account, which Miss Howe could not have
seen, when she wrote thus, will observe that it was not possible for a
person of her true delicacy of mind to act otherwise than she did, to a
man so cruelly and so insolently artful.
But were it to me, a girl of spirit as I am thought to be, I do assure you, I would, in a quarter of an hour (all the time I would allow to punctilio in such a case as yours) know what he drives at: since either he must mean well or ill; if ill, the sooner you know it, the better. If well, whose modesty is it he distresses, but that of his own wife?
And methinks you should endeavour to avoid all exasperating recriminations, as to what you have heard of his failure in morals; especially while you are so happy as not to have occasion to speak of them by experience.
I grant that it gives a worthy mind some satisfaction in having borne its testimony against the immoralities of a bad one. But that correction which is unseasonably given, is more likely either to harden or make an hypocrite, than to reclaim.
I am pleased, however, as well as you, with his making light of your brother's wise project.—Poor creature! and must Master Jemmy Harlowe, with his half-wit, pretend to plot, and contrive mischief, yet rail at Lovelace for the same things?—A witty villain deserves hanging at once (and without ceremony, if you please): but a half-witted one deserves broken bones first, and hanging afterwards. I think Lovelace has given his character in a few words.*
* See Letter XLV. of this volume.
Be angry at me, if you please; but as sure as you are alive, now that this poor creature, whom some call your brother, finds he has succeeded in making you fly your father's house, and that he has nothing to fear but your getting into your own, and into an independence of him, he thinks himself equal to any thing, and so he has a mind to fight Lovelace with his own weapons.