, till I am better informed, I will not explain myself.
If it come out, as I shrewdly suspect it will, the man, my dear, is a
devil; and you must rather think of--I protest I had like to have said
Solmes than him.

But let this be as it will, shall I tell you, how, after all his
offences, he may creep in with you again?

I will. Thus then: It is but to claim for himself the good-natured
character: and this, granted, will blot out the fault of passionate
insolence: and so he will have nothing to do, but this hour to
accustom you to insult; the next, to bring you to forgive him, upon
his submission: the consequence must be, that he will, by this teazing,
break your resentment all to pieces: and then, a little more of the
insult, and a little less of the submission, on his part, will go down,
till nothing else but the first will be seen, and not a bit of the
second. You will then be afraid to provoke so offensive a spirit: and
at last will be brought so prettily, and so audibly, to pronounce the
little reptile word OBEY, that it will do one's heart good to hear you.
The Muscovite wife then takes place of the managed mistress. And if
you doubt the progression, be pleased, my dear, to take your mother's
judgment upon it.

But no more of this just now. Your situation is become too critical to
permit me to dwell upon these sort of topics. And yet this is but an
affected levity with me. My heart, as I have heretofore said, is a
sincere sharer in all your distresses. My sun-shine darts but through
a drizly cloud. My eye, were you to see it, when it seems to you so
gladdened, as you mentioned in a former, is more than ready to overflow,
even at the very passages perhaps upon which you impute to me the
archness of exultation.

But now the unheard-of cruelty and perverseness of some of your friends
[relations, I should say--I am always blundering thus!] the as strange
determinedness of others; your present quarrel with Lovelace; and your
approaching interview with Solmes, from which you are right to apprehend
a great deal; are such considerable circumstances in your story, that it
is fit they should engross all my attention.

You ask me to advise you how to behave upon Solmes's visit. I cannot for
my life. I know they expect a great deal from it: you had not else had
your long day complied with. All I will say is, That if Solmes cannot
be prevailed for, now that Lovelace has so much offended you, he never
will. When the inter