You die with desire, that Sir Harry should declare himself. Behold him declared, proposed, and rejected! My Lady Wilton painted to me in the strongest colours, her brother's love, his respect, the silence he had imposed on himself for fear of displeasing me; and passing from his praises to mine, she expressed the most obliging desire of acquiring in me a sister as well as a friend. You will judge of my embarrassment, my dear, and of the polite evasions it forced me to make use of. I urged my disgust almost invincible to marriage, from the little happiness I had found in that state; my insensibility to love; the habit of a liberty which I could not lose without regret. Indeed, I do not make that use of my freedom, which attaches most widows of my age to the state; but it gives me the same species of pleasure which a miser feels in calculating his riches: he enjoys the blessings which he knows he can procure, and possesses, in imagination, all those which the extent of his fortune makes attainable. One man only, said I to her, could have determined me to sacrifice this precious liberty: no other will ever have the same ascendant over my soul. Lady Wilton is satisfied with the reasons I have alledged; but for Sir Harry, to whom she has communicated my sentiments, he is very far from approving them. There is no living with him any longer; he does not speak to me, does not look at me; contradicts every body; scolds other people's servants, drives away his own, breaks every thing he touches, throws down all he finds in his way: goes like an idiot across the parterres, and coming back, in a reverie, strikes his head against the gate which is shut, astonished to find himself stoped – But how unjust is this sex! Is their humour a law?