The favour of a line as soon as it will suit your convenience, will oblige, madam,

Your most faithful and obedient servant,

M. D.

Letter XLII.

Mrs. Selby to the Countess Dowager of D.

January 27.

Madam,

I am greatly obliged to your ladyship for your good opinion of me, and for the honour you do me, and all our family, in the proposed alliance.

I will answer your ladyship’s question with the requisite explicitness.

Mr. Greville, Mr. Orme, and Mr. Fenwick, all of this county, have respectively made application to us for our interest, and to Miss Byron for her fa-vour: but hitherto without effect; though the terms each proposes might intitle him to consideration.

Miss Byron professes to honour the married state, and one day proposes to make some man happy in it, if it be not his own fault: but declares, that she has not yet seen the man to whom with her hand she can give her heart.

In truth, madam, we are all neutral on this occa-sion. We have the highest opinion of her discre — tion. She has read, she has conversed; and yet there is not in the county one who would make a more prudent manager in a family. We are all fond of her even to doting. Were she not our child, we should love her for her good qualities, and sweetness of manners, and a frankness that has few examples among young women.

Permit me, madam, to add one thing; about which Miss Byron, in her turn, will be very nice. Your ladyship is pleased to say, that my lord’s affections are disengaged. Were his lordship a prince, and hoped to succeed with her, they must not be so, after he had seen and conversed with her. Yet the future happiness, and not pride, would be the consi-deration with her: for she has that diffidence in her own merits, from which the worthy of both sexes cannot be totally free. This diffidence would increase too much for her happiness, were she to be thought of with indifference by any man on earth, who hoped to be more than indifferent to her.

As to other questions, which, as this is answered, your ladyship thinks may come to be asked. I choose?*«-asked (having no reserves) to acquaint your ladyship that Miss Byron has not, in her own power, quite 15,0001. She has, it is true, reversion-ary expectations: but we none of us wish that they should for many years take place; since that must be by the death of Mrs. Shirley, her grandmother, who is equally revered and beloved by all that know her: and whose life is bound up in the happiness of her grand-daughter.

I will strictly obey your ladyship in the secrecy enjoined; and am, madam, Your ladyship’sobligedandfaithful humble servant, MARIANNA SELBY.

Letter XLIII.

From the Countess Dowager of D. to Mrs. Selby.

February 23.