But I must stop here, and take a little walk, to
try to keep down that just indignation which rises
to my pen, when I am about to relate to you what
I must communicate.

***

I am not my own mistress enough--then my
mother--always up and down--and watching as if
I were writing to a fellow. But I will try if I can
contain myself in tolerable bounds.

The women of the house where you are--O my
dear, the women of the house--but you never
thought highly of them--so it cannot be very sur-
>>> prising--nor would you have staid so long with
them, had not the notion of removing to one of your
own, made you less uneasy, and less curious about
their characters, and behaviour. Yet I could now
wish, that you had been less reserved among them
>>> --But I tease you--In short, my dear, you are
certainly in a devilish house!--Be assured that the
woman is one of the vilest women--nor does
she go to you by her right name--[Very true!]--
Her name is not Sinclair, nor is the street she lives
in Dover-street. Did you never go out by your-
self, and discharge the coach or chair, and return
>>> by another coach or chair? If you did, [yet I
don't remember that you ever wrote to me, that
you did,] you would never have found your way to
the vile house, either by the woman's name, Sin-
clair, or by the street's name, mentioned by that
Doleman in his letter about the lodgings.*

* Vol. III. Letters XXXVIII. and XXXIX.

The wretch might indeed have held out these
false lights a little more excusably, had the house
been an honest house; and had his end only been
to prevent mischief from your brother. But this
contrivance was antecedent, as I think, to your
brother's project; so that no excuse can be made
>>> for his intentions at the time--the man, whatever he
may now intend, was certainly then, even then, a
villain in his heart.

***

>>> I am excessively concerned that I should be pre-
vailed upon, between your over-niceness, on one
hand, and my mother's positiveness, on the other, to
be satisfied without knowing how to direct to you
at your lodgings. I think too, that the proposal
that I should be put off to a third-hand knowledge,
or rather veiled in a first-hand ignorance, came f