friendship; but I find it is not to me you'll ever have
them; you think me all that is detestable; you accuse me of want of
sincerity and generosity. To convince you of your mistake, I'll show you
the last extremes of both.

"While I foolishly fancied you loved me, (which I confess I had never
any great reason for, more than that I wished it,) there is no condition
of life I could not have been happy in with you, so very much I liked
you--I may say loved, since it is the last thing I'll ever say to you.
This is telling you sincerely my greatest weakness; and now I will
oblige you with a new proof of generosity--I'll never see you more. I
shall avoid all public places; and this is the last letter I shall send.
If you write, be not displeased if I send it back unopened. I force my
inclinations to oblige yours; and remember that you have told me I could
not oblige you more than by refusing you. Had I intended ever to see you
again, I durst not have sent this letter. Adieu."

The above letter was evidently sent in a fit of pique. Certainly the
position must have been almost unbearable to a young woman of spirit.
Here was Lady Mary, in her twenty-second or twenty-third year, for all
practical purposes betrothed, and her father and her lover quarrelling
over settlements. Her friends were all getting married and having
establishments of their own, and she more or less in disgrace, living at
one or other of her father's houses.

Nothing came of her announcement that she desired no further relation
with Montagu. She could not bring herself definitely to break with
Montagu, and he would neither wed her nor give her up. The
correspondence continued with unabated vigour.

"I am in pain about the letter I sent you this morning," she wrote in
March, 1911. "I fear you should think, after what I have said, you
cannot, in point of honour, break off with me. Be not scrupulous on that
article, nor affect to make me break first, to excuse your doing it; I
would owe nothing but to inclination: if you do not love me, I may have
the less esteem of myself, but not of you: I am not of the number of
those women that have the opinion of their persons Mr. Bayes had of his
play, that 'tis the touchstone of sense, and they are to frame their
judgment of people's understanding according to what they think of them.

"You may have wit, good humour, and good nature, and not like me. I
allow a great deal for the inconstancy of mankind in general,