is better within these few days past; but attributes the
amendment to her Harriet's return.

How do they all bless, revere, extol, your noble brother!--How do they
wish--And how do they regret--you know what--Yet how ready are they to
applaud your Harriet, if she can hold her magnanimity, in preferring the
happiness of Clementina to her own!--My grandmamma and aunt are of
opinion, that I should; and they praise me for the generosity of my
effort, whether the superior merits of the man will or will not allow me
to succeed in it. But my uncle, my Lucy, and my Nancy, from their
unbounded love of me, think a little, and but a little, narrower; and,
believing it will go hard with me, say, It is hard. My uncle, in
particular, says, The very pretension is flight and nonsense: but,
however, if the girl, added he, can parade away her passion for an object
so worthy, with all my heart: it will be but just, that the romancing
elevations, which so often drive headstrong girls into difficulties,
should now and then help a more discreet one out of them.

Adieu, my beloved Lady G----! Repeated compliments, love, thanks, to my
Lord and Lady L----, to my Emily, to Dr. Bartlett, to Mr. Beauchamp, and
particularly to my Lord G----. Dear, dear Charlotte, be good! Let me
beseech you be good! If you are not, you will have every one of my
friends who met you at Dunstable, and, from their report, my grandmamma
and Nancy, against you; for they find but one fault in my lord: it is,
that he seems too fond of a lady, who, by her archness of looks, and
half-saucy turns upon him, even before them, evidently shewed--Shall I
say what? But I stand up for you, my dear. Your gratitude, your
generosity, your honour, I say, (and why should I not add your duty?)
will certainly make you one of the most obliging of wives, to the most
affectionate of husbands.

My uncle says he hopes so: but though he adores you for a friend, and the
companion of a lively hour; yet he does not know but his dame Selby is
still the woman whom a man should prefer for a wife: and she, said he, is
full as saucy as a wife need to be; though I think, Harriet, that she has
not been the less dutiful of late for your absence.

Once more, adieu, my dear Lady G----, and continue to love your

HARRIET BYRON.

LETTER XXXVII

LADY G----, TO MISS BYRON
THURSDAY, APRIL 27.

Every one of the Dunstable party say, that you are a grateful and good
girl. Beauchamp can talk of nobody