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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 disapproved them, which ought to have been enough.⁠—My plea of concealing the truth she did not think sufficient.⁠—She was displeased; I thought unreasonably so: I thought her, on a thousand occasions, unnecessarily scrupulous and cautious: I thought her even cold. But she was always right. If I had followed her judgment, and subdued my spirits to the level of what she deemed proper, I should have escaped the greatest unhappiness I have ever known.⁠—We quarrelled.⁠—Do you remember the morning spent at Donwell?⁠— There every little dissatisfaction that had occurred before came to a crisis. I was late; I met her walking home by herself, and wanted to walk with her, but she would not suffer it. She absolutely refused to allow me, which I then thought most unreasonable. Now, however, I see nothing in it but a very natural and consistent degree of discretion. While I, to blind the world to our engagement, was behaving one hour with objectionable particularity to another woman, was she to be consenting the next to a proposal which might have made every previous caution useless?⁠—Had we been met walking together between Donwell and Highbury, the truth must have been suspected.⁠—I was