tempted to own I had heard from you, and to have
communicated to her such parts of your two letters as would have
demonstrated your penitence, and your earnestness to obtain the
revocation of your father's malediction, as well as his protection from
outrages that may still be offered to you. But then your sister would
probably have expected a sight of the letters, and even to have been
permitted to take them with her to the family.

Yet they must one day be acquainted with the sad story:--and it is
impossible but they must pity you, and forgive you, when they know your
early penitence, and your unprecedented sufferings; and that you have
fallen by the brutal force of a barbarous ravisher, and not by the vile
arts of a seducing lover.

The wicked man gives it out at Lord M.'s, as Miss Harlowe tells me, that
he is actually married to you--yet she believes it not: nor had I the
heart to let her know the truth.

She put it close to me, Whether I had not corresponded with you from the
time of your going away? I could safely tell her, (as I did,) that I had
not: but I said, that I was well informed, that you took extremely to
heart your father's imprecation; and that, if she would excuse me, I
would say it would be a kind and sisterly part, if she would use her
interest to get you discharged from it.

Among other severe things, she told me, that my partial fondness for you
made me very little consider the honour of the rest of the family: but,
if I had not heard this from you, she supposed I was set on by Miss Howe.

She expressed herself with a good deal of bitterness against that young
lady: who, it seems, every where, and to every body, (for you must think
that your story is the subject of all conversations,) rails against your
family; treating them, as your sister says, with contempt, and even with
ridicule.

I am sorry such angry freedoms are taken, for two reasons; first, because
such liberties never do any good. I have heard you own, that Miss Howe
has a satirical vein; but I should hope that a young lady of her sense,
and right cast of mind, must know that the end of satire is not to
exasperate, but amend; and should never be personal. If it be, as my
good father used to say, it may make an impartial person suspect that the
satirist has a natural spleen to gratify; which may be as great a fault
in him, as any of those which he pretends to censure and expose in
others.

Perhaps a hint of this from you will