Is it not plain, my dear, that he designs to vex and tease me?  Proud, yet mean and foolish man, if so!—­But you say all punctilio is at an end with me.  Why, why, will he take pains to make a heart wrap itself up in reserve, that wishes only, and that for his sake as well as my own, to observe due decorum?

Modesty, I think, required of me, that it should pass as he had put it:  Did it not?—­I think it did.  Would to heaven—­but what signifies wishing?

But when he would have rewarded himself, as he had heretofore called it, for this self-supposed concession, with a kiss, I repulsed him with a just and very sincere disdain.

He seemed both vexed and surprised, as one who had made the most agreeable proposals and concessions, and thought them ungratefully returned.  He plainly said, that he thought our situation would entitle him to such an innocent freedom:  and he was both amazed and grieved to be thus scornfully repulsed.

No reply could be made be me on such a subject.

I abruptly broke from him.  I recollect, as I passed by one of the pier-glasses, that I saw in it his clenched hand offered in wrath to his forehead:  the words, Indifference, by his soul, next to hatred, I heard him speak; and something of ice he mentioned:  I heard not what.

Whether he intends to write to my Lord, or Miss Montague, I cannot tell.  But, as all delicacy ought to be over with me now, perhaps I am to blame to expect it from a man who may not know what it is.  If he does not, and yet thinks himself very polite, and intends not to be otherwise, I am rather to be pitied, than he to be censured.

And after all, since I must take him as I find him, I must:  that is to say, as a man so vain and so accustomed to be admired, that, not being conscious of internal defect, he has taken no pains to polish more than his outside:  and as his proposals are higher than my expectations; and as, in his own opinion, he has a great deal to bear from me, I will (no new offence preventing) sit down to answer them; and, if possible, in terms as unobjectionable to him, as his are to me.

But after all, see you not, my dear, more and more, the mismatch that there is in our minds?

However, I am willing to compound for my fault, by giving up, (if that may be all my punishment) the expectation of what is deemed happiness in this life, with such a husband as I fear he will make.  In short, I will content myself to be a suffering person through the state to the end of my life.—­A long one it cannot be!

This may qualify him (as it may prove) from stings of conscience from misbehaviour to a first wife, to be a more tolerable one to a second, though not perhaps a better deserving one:  while my story, to all who shall know it, will afford these instructions:  That the eye is a traitor, and ought ever to be mistrusted:  that form is deceitful:  in other words; that a fine person is seldom paired by a fine mind:  and that sound principle and a good heart, are the only bases on which the hopes of a happy future, either with respect to this world, or the other, can be built.