My sister is in correspondence with my new divinity. I thought proper
to bestow a few gentle lashes on her, for a letter which she wrote to
me, and which I mentioned in my first from Paris, insinuating her own
superiority, and giving me to understand how fortunate it would be for
the world should I but prove as consummate a paragon as herself. She
richly deserved it, and yet I now wish I had forborne; for, if she have
her sex's love of vengeance in her, she may injure me in the tenderest
part. Never was woman so devoted to woman as Anna St. Ives is to
Louisa. I should suspect any other of her sex of extravagant
affectation; but her it is impossible to suspect: her manner is so
peculiarly her own: and it comes with such unsought for energy, that
there is no resisting conviction.

I have two or three times been inclined to write and ask Louisa's
pardon. But, no; that pride forbids. She dare not openly profess
herself my enemy? She may insinuate, and countermine; but I have a
tolerably strong dependance on my own power over Anna. She is not
blind. She is the first to feel and to acknowledge superior merit; and
I think I have no reason to fear repulse from any woman, whose hand I
can bring myself to ask.

One of Anna's greatest perfections, with me, is the ready esteem which
she entertained for me, and her not being insensible to those qualities
which I flatter myself I possess. Never yet did woman treat me with
affected disdain, who did not at last repent of her coquetry.

'Tis true that Anna has sometimes piqued me, by appearing to value me
more for my sister's sake even than for my own. I have been ready to
say dissimulation was inseparable from woman. And yet her manner is as
unlike hypocrisy as possible, I never yet could brook scorn, or