With six horses on full speed, relays properly disposed, and an air of the most eager haste, I fly, accompanied by persons for whom I have very little regard, to others, for whom I have no regard at all: I abandon my dearest friends; I leave you, you whom I love so tenderly: Ah! why this departure! this haste! why press to arrive, where I do not wish to be! To remove myself, – from whom? – From Lord Ossory. Ah! my dear Henrietta, who would once have told me, I should ever have fled from him? Is he not the same object, whose loss, I imagined, would have deprived me of life; who, during two years, was always present to my idea, and, whom nothing has power to make me forget? I fly, then, that I may not meet those eyes, that mine have sought with so much pleasure; where my destiny seemed wrote, and whose glance once ruled all the movements of my soul. Strange alteration! what different effects are produced by the same cause? Heavens! what was my surprize at seeing him! How did his mourning, and his air of sorrow strike me! How ought his wife to regret the loss of life? What difficulty had I not to turn my head at parting! Into what a state did that sight! – But, could you conceive that he has dared to call at my door, – to insist on seeing me, – to write to me, – to imagine I would open his letters? How audacious is this man? But, are they not all so?

I am still astonished at the step I have taken. I tell myself every moment I have acted rightly; I tell myself so, but I do not feel it sufficiently: I seek for reasons to applaud myself on the part I have pursued; I find them, but it is in my pride only. I experience, my dear, that the heart has no taste for those weak lenitives, in which our vanity finds so much consolation.