How good you are in your apprehensions that there may be a man on whom
your daughter has cast her eye, and who cannot look upon her with the
same distinction--O that I had been near you when you wrote that
sweetly-compassionating, that indulgent passage! I would have wiped the
tears from your eyes myself, and reverenced you as my true father.
You demand of me, as my father, a hint, or half a hint, as you call it,
to be given to my brother Fowler; or if not to him, to you. To him, whom
I call father, I mean all the duty of a child. I call him not father
nominally only: I will, irksome as the subject is, own, without reserve,
the truth to you--[In tenderness to my brother, how could I to him?]--
There is a man whom, and whom only, I could love as a good wife ought to
love her husband. He is the best of men. O my good Sir Rowland
Meredith! if you knew him, you would love him yourself, and own him for
your son. I will not conceal his name from my father: Sir Charles
Grandison is the man. Inquire about him. His character will rise upon
you from every mouth. He engaged first all your daughter's gratitude, by
rescuing her from a great danger and oppression; for he is as brave as he
is good: and how could she help suffering a tenderness to spring up from
her gratitude, of which she was never before sensible to any man in the
world? There is something in the way, my good sir; but not that proceeds
from his slights or contempts.
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