What can you mean, my dear, by exulting so much over your aunt, for living to an advanced age, a single woman? However ineffectual, let me add to my former expostulatory thidings on this subject: Would you have one think you are overjoyed, that you have so soon put it out of any one’s power to reproach you on the like account? If so, you ought to be more thankful than you seem to be, to Lord G. who has extended his generosity to you, and kept you from the odium. Upon my word, my dear Lady G. I think it looks like a want of decency in women to cast reflections on others of their sex, possibly for their prudence and virtue. Do you consider how you exalt, byyourludicrous freedoms, the men whom sometimes you affect to despise? No wonder if they ridicule old maids. It is their interest to do so. Lords of the creation, sometimes you deridingiy call the insulters; lords of the creation, indeed you make them! And pray, do you think, that the same weakness which made your aunt Graudison tell her dreams, in the joy of her heart, as an old maid, might not have made her guilty of the same foible, had she been an old wife? Joy is the parent of many a silly thing. Don’t you own, that the arrival of your brother, which made your aunt break out into dream-telling, made you break into laughter (even in a letter) of which you were ashamed to tell the cause? Wives, my dear, should not fall into th<e mistakes, for which they would make maids the subject of their ridicule. You know butter; and therefore should be above joining the foolish multitude, in a general cry to hunt down an unjuitunatc class of people (as you reckon them) of your own sex. Your aunt Grandison’s dreams, let me add, were more innocent, than your waking mirth You must excuse me I could say a great deal more upon the subject; but if I have not said enough to make you sorry for your fault, a great deal more would be ineffectual So much therefore for this subject.

Poor dear Emily! I wonder not at the effect the arrival, and first sight, of her guardian, had upon her tender heart.