that sort to the petulance they are both pretty much noted for.

My brother's acquisition then took place. This made us all very
happy; and he went down to take possession of it: and his absence (on
so good an account too) made us still happier. Then followed Lord
M.'s proposal for my sister: and this was an additional felicity for
the time. I have told you how exceedingly good-humoured it made my
sister.

You know how that went off: you know what came on in its place.

My brother then returned; and we were all wrong again: and Bella, as I
observed in my letters abovementioned, had an opportunity to give
herself the credit of having refused Mr. Lovelace, on the score of his
reputed faulty morals. This united my brother and sister in one
cause. They set themselves on all occasions to depreciate Mr.
Lovelace, and his family too (a family which deserves nothing but
respect): and this gave rise to the conversation I am leading to,
between my uncles and them: of which I now come to give the
particulars; after I have observed, that it happened before the
rencounter, and soon after the inquiry made into Mr. Lovelace's
affairs had come out better than my brother and sister hoped it
would.*


* See Letter IV.


They were bitterly inveighing against him, in their usual way,
strengthening their invectives with some new stories in his disfavour,