ondon? By your friend's description of the widow's house, I
should think I might be safe there.

The widow's house, he replied, as described by his friend, being a back
house within a front one, and looking to a garden, rather than to a
street, had the appearance of privacy: but if, when there, it was not
approved, it would be easy to find another more to my liking--though, as
to his part, the method he would advise should be, to write to my uncle
Harlowe, as one of my trustees, and wait the issue of it here at Mrs.
Sorlings's, fearlessly directing it to be answered hither. To be afraid
of little spirits was but to encourage insults, he said. The substance
of the letter should be, 'To demand as a right, what they would refuse
if requested as a courtesy: to acknowledge that I had put myself [too
well, he said, did their treatment justify me] into the protection of
the ladies of his family [by whose orders, and Lord M.'s, he himself
would appear to act]: but that upon my own terms, which were such, that
I was under no obligation to those ladies for the favour; it being
no more than they would have granted to any one of my sex, equally
distressed.' If I approved not of his method, happy should he think
himself, he said, if I would honour him with the opportunity of making
such a claim in his own name--but this was a point [with his but's
again in the same breath!] that he durst but just touch upon. He hoped,
however, that I would think their violence a sufficient inducement for
me to take such a wished-for resolution.

Inwardly vexed, I told him that he himself had proposed to leave me when
I was in town; that I expected he would: and that, when I was known to
be absolutely independent, I should consider what to write, and what to
do: but that while he was with me, I neither would nor could.

He would be very sincere with me, he said: this project of my brother's
had changed the face of things. He must, before he left me, see whether
I should or should not approve of the London widow and her family, if I
chose to go thither. They might be people whom my brother might buy. But
if he saw they were persons of integrity, he then might go for a day
or two, or so. But he must needs say, he could not leave me longer at a
time.

Do you propose, Sir, said I, to take up your lodgings in the house where
I shall lodge?

He did not, he said, as he knew the use I intended to make of his
absence, and my punctilio--and yet the house