you. But had you been actually in possession of that estate, and
living up to it, and upon it, (your youth protected from blighting
tongues by the company of your prudent Norton, as you had proposed,)
do you think that your brother, grudging it to you at the time as he
did, and looking upon it as his right as an only son, would have been
practising about it, and aiming at it? I told you some time ago, that
I thought your trials but proportioned to your prudence:* but you will
be more than woman, if you can extricate yourself with honour, having
such violent spirits and sordid minds in some, and such tyrannical and
despotic wills in others, to deal with. Indeed, all may be done, and
the world be taught further to admire you for your blind duty and
will-less resignation, if you can persuade yourself to be Mrs. Solmes.


* Letter I.


I am pleased with the instances you give me of Mr. Lovelace's
benevolence to his own tenants, and with his little gift to your
uncle's. Mrs. Fortescue allows him to be the best of landlords: I
might have told you that, had I thought it necessary to put you into
some little conceit of him. He has qualities, in short, that may make
him a tolerable creature on the other side of fifty: but God help the
poor woman to whose lot he shall fall till then! women, I should say,
perhaps; since he may break half-a-dozen hearts before that time.--But
to the point I was upon--Shall we not have reason to commend the
tenant's grateful honesty, if we are told, that with joy the poor man
called out your uncle, and on the spot paid him in part of his debt
those two guineas?--But what shall we say of that landlord, who,
though he knew the poor man to be quite destitute, could take it; and,