Tell him, that I think it very hard, that when my nearest relations leave me so generously to my li-berty, a man to whom I never gave cause to treat me with disrespect, should take upon himself to threaten and controul me.

Ask him, What are his pretences for following me to London, or elsewhere?

If I had not had reasons before to avoid a more than neighbourly civility to him, he has now fur-nished me with very strong ones. The threatening lover must certainly make a tyrant husband. Don’t you think so, Lucy? But make not supposals of lover or husband to him: these bold men will turn shadows into substance in their own favour.

A woman who is so much exalted above what she can deserve, has reason to be terrified, were she to marry the complimenter (even could she suppose him so blinded by his passion as not to be absolutely insincere) to think of the height she must fall from in his opinion, when she has put it into his power to treat her but as what she is.

Indeed I both despise and fear a very high complimenter. — Despise him for his designing flattery, supposing him not to believe himself; or, if he mean what he says, for his injudiciousness. \fear him, lest he should (as in the former case he must hope) be able to raise a vanity in me, that would sink me beneath his meanness, and give him cause to triumph over my folly, at the very time that I am full of my own wisdom.

High-strained compliments, in short, always pull me down; always make me shrink into myself. Have I not some vanity to guard against? I have no doubt but Mr. Greville wished I should see this letter: and this gives me some little indignation against myself; for does it not look as if, from some faults in my conduct, Mr. Greville had formed hopes of succeeding by treating me like a fool?

I hope these gentlemen will not follow me to town, as they threaten. If they do, I will not see them, if I can any way avoid it. Yet, for me to appear to them solicitous on this head, or to desire them not to go, will be in some measure to lay my-self under an obligation to their acquiescence. It is not therefore for me to hope to influence them in this matter, since they expect too much in return for it from me; and since they will be ready to found a merit in their passion even for disobliging me.

I cannot bear, however, to think of their dangling after me wherever I go. These men, my dear, were we to give them importance with us, would be greater infringers of our natural feedom than the most severe parents; and for their owisakes: where-as parents, if ever so despotic (if not unnatural ones indeed) mean solely our good, though headstrong girls do not always think so. Yet such, even such c in be teazed out of their wills, at least out of their duty, by the men who stile themselves lovers, when they are invincible to all the entreaties and commands of their parents.