captivate them: but I am afraid that my brother's and sister's design
is to ruin me with them at any rate. Were it otherwise, would they
not on my return from you have rather sought to court than frighten me
into measures which their hearts are so much bent to carry? A method
they have followed ever since.

Mean time, orders are given to all the servants to shew the highest
respect to Mr. Solmes; the generous Mr. Solmes is now his character
with some of our family! But are not these orders a tacit confession,
that they think his own merit will not procure him respect? He is
accordingly, in every visit he makes, not only highly caressed by the
principals of our family, but obsequiously attended and cringed to by
the menials.--And the noble settlements are echoed from every mouth.

Noble is the word used to enforce the offers of a man who is mean
enough avowedly to hate, and wicked enough to propose to rob of their
just expectations, his own family, (every one of which at the same
time stands in too much need of his favour,) in order to settle all he
is worth upon me; and if I die without children, and he has none by
any other marriage, upon a family which already abounds. Such are his
proposals.

But were there no other motive to induce me to despise the upstart
man, is not this unjust one to his family enough?--The upstart man, I
repeat; for he was not born to the immense riches he is possessed of:
riches left by one niggard to another, in injury to the next heir,
because that other is a niggard. And should I not be as culpable, do
you think, in my acceptance of such unjust settlements, as he is in
the offer of them, if I could persuade myself to be a sharer in them,
or suffer a reversionary expectation of possessing them to influence