Some of the contents of your last are very agreeable to me, Lucy. I will
begin in earnest to think of leaving London. Don't let me look silly in
your eyes, my dear, when I come. It was not so very presumptuous in me
(was it?) to hope--When all his relations--When he himself--Yet what room
for hope did he, could he, give me? He was honest; and I cheated myself:
but then all you, my dearest friends, encouraged the cheat: nay, pointed
my wishes, and my hopes, by yours, before I had dared (shall I say, or
condescended?) to own them to myself.
You may let that Greville know, if you please, that there is no room for
his If's, nor, of consequence, any for his menaces. You may own, that I
shall soon be in Northamptonshire. This may prevent his and Fenwick's
threatened journey to town.
But, Lucy, though my heart has been ever dutifully, as I may say, open to
the venerable domestic circle; though it would not have been an honest
heart, could it, circumstanced as I was, have concealed itself from Lady
D----; and must have been an impenetrable one indeed, if it could have
been disguised to the two sisters here--yet, I beseech you, my dear,
almost on my knees I beseech you, let not the audacious, the insulting
Greville, have ground given him to suspect a weakness in your Harriet,
which indelicate minds know not how to judge of delicately.
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