Letter XXXVII

Summary

My dearest PAMELA,

Inclosed are all the Letters you send for. I rejoice with you upon the Turn this afflicting Affair has taken, thro’ your inimitable Prudence, and a Courage I thought not in you.—A Wretch!—to give you so much Discomposure.—But I will not, if he be good now, rave against him, as I was going to do—I am impatient to hear what Account he gives of the Matter. I hope he will be able to abandon this—I won't call her Names; for she loves the Wretch; and that, if he be just to you, will be her Punishment.

What Care ought these young Widows to take of their Reputation?— And how watchful ought they to be over themselves?—She was hardly out of her Weeds, and yet must go to a Masquerade, and tempt her Fate, with all her Passions about her, with an Independence, and an Affluence of Fortune, that made her able to think of nothing but gratifying them.

Then her Lord and she had been marry’d but barely Two Years; and one of them, she was forc’d, with the gayest Temper in the World, to be his Nurse: For, always inclin’d to a consumptive Indisposition, he languish’d, without Hope, a Twelvemonth, and then dy’d.

She has good Qualities—is generous—noble—but has strong Passions, and is thoughtless and precipitant.

My Lord came home tome last Tuesday, with a long Story ofmy Brother and her; for I had kept the Matter as secret as I could, for his sake and yours. It seems, he had it from Sir John—Uncle to the young Lord C. who is very earnest to bring on a Treaty of Marriage between her and his Nephew, who is in Love with her, and is a fine young Gentleman: but has held back, on the Liberties she has lately given herself with my Brother. I hope she is innocent, as to Fact; but I know not what to say to it.He ought to be hang’d, if he did not say she was. Yet I have a great Opinion of his Veracity: And yet he is so bold a Wretch!—And her Inconsideration is so great!—