'I am very sensible that the performance of the task you have put me upon
will leave me without excuse: but I will not have recourse either to
evasion or palliation.

'As my cousin Charlotte has severely observed, I am not ashamed to do
justice to Miss Harlowe's merit.

'I own to you all, and, what is more, with high regret, (if not with
shame, cousin Charlotte,) that I have a great deal to answer for in my
usage of this lady. The sex has not a nobler mind, nor a lovelier person
of it. And, for virtue, I could not have believed (excuse me, Ladies)
that there ever was a woman who gave, or could have given, such
illustrious, such uniform proofs of it: for, in her whole conduct, she
has shown herself to be equally above temptation and art; and, I had
almost said, human frailty.

'The step she so freely blames herself for taking, was truly what she
calls compulsatory: for though she was provoked to think of going off
with me, she intended it not, nor was provided to do so: neither would
she ever have had the thought of it, had her relations left her free,
upon her offered composition to renounce the man she did not hate, in
order to avoid the man she did.

'It piqued my pride, I own, that I could so little depend upon the force
of those impressions which I had the vanity to hope I had made in a heart
so delicate; and, in my worst devices against her, I encouraged myself
that I abused no confidence; for none had she in my honour.

'The evils she has suffered, it would have been more than a miracle had