sister hates; and so prevent her having the man whom she herself loves
(whether she have hope of him or not), and whom she suspects her
sister loves!

Poisons and poniard have often been set to work by minds inflamed by
disappointed love, and actuated by revenge.--Will you wonder, then,
that the ties of relationship in such a case have no force, and that a
sister forgets to be a sister?

Now I know this to be her secret motive, (the more grating to her, as
her pride is concerned to make her disavow it), and can consider it
joined with her former envy, and as strengthened by a brother, who has
such an ascendant over the whole family; and whose interest (slave to
it as he always was) engaged him to ruin you with every one: both
possessed of the ears of all your family, and having it as much in
their power as in their will to misrepresent all you say, all you do;
such subject also as to the rencounter, and Lovelace's want of morals,
to expatiate upon: your whole family likewise avowedly attached to the
odious man by means of the captivating proposals he has made them;--
when I consider all these things, I am full of apprehensions for you.
--O my dear, how will you be able to maintain your ground;--I am sure,
(alas! I am too sure) that they will subdue such a fine spirit as
yours, unused to opposition; and (tell it not in Gath) you must be
Mrs. Solmes!

Mean time, it is now easy, as you will observe, to guess from what
quarter the report I mentioned to you in one of my former, came, That
the younger sister has robbed the elder of her lover:* for Betty
whispered it, at the time she whispered the rest, that neither
Lovelace nor you had done honourably by her young mistress.--How