ult. , as you will conclude, immediately opened to me the happiest prospects, I should not have presumed on such early measures, but from the very particular circumstances, which left me not an hour to lose. I should myself have shrunk from anything so hasty, and she would have felt every scruple of mine with multiplied strength and refinement.⁠—But I had no choice. The hasty engagement she had entered into with that woman⁠—Here, my dear madam, I was obliged to leave off abruptly, to recollect and compose myself.⁠—I have been walking over the country, and am now, I hope, rational enough to make the rest of my letter what it ought to be.⁠—It is, in fact, a most mortifying retrospect for me. I behaved shamefully. And here I can admit, that my manners to Miss W. , in being unpleasant to Miss F. , were highly blameable. She