That to her aunt Hervey is written in the same pious and generous strain
with those preceding, seeking to give comfort rather than distress. 'The
Almighty, I hope,' says she, 'has received and blessed my penitence, and
I am happy. Could I have been more than so at the end of what is called
a happy life of twenty, or thirty, or forty years to come? And what are
twenty, or thirty, or forty years to look back upon? In half of any of
these periods, what friends might not I have mourned for? what
temptations from worldly prosperity might I not have encountered with?
And in such a case, immersed in earthly pleasures, how little likelihood,
that, in my last stage, I should have been blessed with such a
preparation and resignation as I have now been blessed with?'

She proceeds as follows: 'Thus much, Madam, of comfort to you and to
myself from this dispensation. As to my dear parents, I hope they will
console themselves that they have still many blessings left, which ought
to balance the troubles my error has given them: that, unhappy as I have
been to be the interrupter of their felicities, they never, till this my
fault, know any heavy evil: that afflictions patiently borne may be
turned into blessings: that uninterrupted happiness is not to be expected
in this life: that, after all, they have not, as I humbly presume to
hope, the probability of the everlasting perdition of their child to
deplore: and that, in short, when my story comes to be fully known, they
will have the comfort to find that my sufferings redound more to my
honour than to my disgrace.

'These considerations will, I hope, make their temporary loss of but one
child out of three (unhappily circumstances too as she was) matter of
greater consolation than affliction. And the rather, as we may hope for
a happy meeting once more, never to be separated either by time or
offences.'