As all your friends without doors are apprehensive that some other
unhappy event may result from so violent a contention, in which it
seems the families on both sides are now engaged, I must desire you to
enable me, on the authority of your own information, to do you
occasional justice.

My mother, and all of us, like the rest of the world, talk of nobody
but you on this occasion, and of the consequences which may follow
from the resentments of a man of Mr. Lovelace's spirit; who, as he
gives out, has been treated with high indignity by your uncles. My
mother will have it, that you cannot now, with any decency, either see
him, or correspond with him. She is a good deal prepossessed by your
uncle Antony; who occasionally calls upon us, as you know; and, on
this rencounter, has represented to her the crime which it would be in
a sister to encourage a man who is to wade into her favour (this was
his expression) through the blood of her brother.

Write to me therefore, my dear, the whole of your story from the time
that Mr. Lovelace was first introduced into your family; and
particularly an account of all that passed between him and your
sister; about which there are different reports; some people scrupling
not to insinuate that the younger sister has stolen a lover from the
elder: and pray write in so full a manner as may satisfy those who
know not so much of your affairs as I do. If anything unhappy should
fall out from the violence of such spirits as you have to deal with,
your account of all things previous to it will be your best
justification.

You see what you draw upon yourself by excelling all your sex. Every
individual of it who knows you, or has heard of you, seems to think