had I, once for all, when he was forbidden to visit me, and I to receive
his visits, pleaded the authority by which I ought to have been bound,
and denied to write to him!--But I thought I could proceed, or stop, as I
pleased. I supposed it concerned me, more than any other, to be the
arbitress of the quarrels of unruly spirits.--And now I find my
presumption punished--punished, as other sins frequently are, by itself!

As to this last rashness; now, that it is too late, I plainly see how I
ought to have conducted myself. As he knew I had but one way of
transmitting to him the knowledge of what befel me; as he knew that my
fate was upon a crisis with my friends; and that I had in my letter to
him reserved the liberty of revocation; I should not have been solicitous
whether he had got my letter or not: when he had come, and found I did
not answer to his signal, he would presently have resorted to the loose
bricks, and there been satisfied, by the date of my letter, that it was
his own fault that he had it not before. But, governed by the same
pragmatical motives which induced me to correspond with him at first, I
was again afraid, truly, with my foolish and busy prescience; and the
disappointment would have thrown him into the way of receiving fresh
insults from the same persons; which might have made him guilty of some
violence to them. And so to save him an apprehended rashness, I rushed
into a real one myself. And what vexes me more is, that it is plain to
me now, by all his behaviour, that he had as great a confidence in my
weakness, as I had in my own strength. And so, in a point entirely
relative to my honour, he has triumphed; for he has not been mistaken in
me, while I have in myself!

Tell me, my dear Miss Howe, tell me truly, if your unbiassed heart does
not despise me?--It must! for your mind and mine were ever one; and I
despise myself!--And well I may: For could the giddiest and most