so uniform in your conduct: So desirous, as you always said, of sliding through life to the end of it unnoted; and, as I may add, not withing to be observed even for your silent benevolence; sufficiently happy in the noble consciousness which rewards it: Rather useful, than glaring, your deserved motto, though now push'd into blaze, as we fee, to your regret; and yet blamed at home for the faults of others;—How must such a virtue suffer on every hand!—Yet it must be allowed, that your present trial is but proportion'd to your prudence!—
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 fides are now engaged, I must desire you to enable me, on the authority of your own information, to do you occasional justice.
My mamma, 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 mamma will have it, that you cannot now, with any decency, either fee 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 filter, to encourage a man, who is to wade into her favour, (this was his expression) thro' 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 on account of all that passed between him and your sister; about which there are different reports; some people supposing that the younger sister (at least by her uncommon merit) has stolen a lover from the elder: And pray write in so full a manner, as may gratify those,
