erer.

Miss Howe is a charming creature too; but confoundedly smart and
spiritful. I am a good deal afraid of her. Her mother can hardly keep
her in. I must continue to play off old Antony, by my honest Joseph,
upon that mother, in order to manage that daughter, and oblige my
beloved to an absolute dependence upon myself.*

* See Vol. I. Letter XXXI.

Mrs. Howe is impatient of contradiction. So is Miss. A young lady who is
sensible that she has all the materials requisites herself, to be under
maternal controul;--fine ground for a man of intrigue to build upon!--A
mother over-notable; a daughter over-sensible; and their Hickman, who
is--over-neither: but merely a passive--

Only that I have an object still more desirable--!

Yet how unhappy, that these two young ladies lived so near each other,
and are so well acquainted! Else how charmingly might I have managed
them both!

But one man cannot have every woman worth having--Pity though--when the
man is such a VERY clever fellow!

LETTER XIII

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. [IN CONTINUATION.]

Never was there such a pair of scribbling lovers as we;--yet perhaps
whom it so much concerns to keep from each other what each writes. She
won't have any thing else to do. I would, if she'd let me. I am not
reformed enough for a husband.--Patience is a virtue, Lord M. says. Slow
and sure, is another of his sentences. If I had not a great deal of that
virtue, I should not have waited the Harlowes own time of ripening into
execution my plots upon themselves and upon their goddess daughter.

My beloved has been writing to her saucy friend, I believe, all that has
befallen her, and what has passed between us hitherto. She will possibly
have fine subjects for her pen, if she be as minute as I am.

I would not be so barbarous as to permit old Antony to set Mrs. Howe
against her, did I not dread the consequences of the correspondence
between the two young ladies. So lively the one, so vigilant, so prudent
both, who would not wish to outwit such girls, and to be able to twirl
them round his finger?

My charmer has written to her sister for her clothes, for some gold, and
for some of her books. What books can tell her more than she knows? But
I can. So she had better study me.

She may write. She must be obliged to me at last, with all her pride.
Miss Howe indeed will be ready enough to supply her; but I question,
whether she can do it without her mothe