“One only child, whom we jointly call our daughter, was all that Providence entrusted to me: her mother died when she was an infant, and I never ventured on a second marriage. I did not seek for teachers to instruct me how to educate my child: I took that task upon myself, and was her only master: I coveted not to accomplish her as a fine lady; I studied to implant good principles in her heart, and make her an honest, honourable woman. I suspect my discipline was too rigid, for I totally overlooked amusement, and fixed a melancholy upon her spirit, accompanied with so absolute a submission to my dictates, that she seemed to think and act without any will or option of her own. “When you tendered to me your alliance, I embraced it with ardour; for I held your character then, as I do to this day, in the highest honour and respect. Had ambition been my ruling passion, I could have looked up to nothing in point of family of superior dignity; had avarice been my vice, how could I have gratified it more than by marrying my daughter to the only son and heir of De Lancaster? Your son was comely, courteous, unassuming, and though perhaps not prominently marked with any brilliant gleams of genius, yet certainly in moral purity no young man bore a more unblemished character. I recommended the connection to my daughter--warmly, anxiously recommended it--Implicitly, without appeal, in a concern the most material she accorded to my wish, and answered at the altar to the awful question there repeated as compliantly as she did, when I first proposed it to her. “Now, sir, when I disclose to you that this too duteous creature had conceived a passion, which under the terror of my authority she had not courage to discover, judge what my sorrow and remorse must be. I have, though unintentionally, made a wreck of her peace, and endangered that of your son. I may have brought into your family a wife without a heart for her husband, and a mother, (which Heaven avert!) without natural affection for her offspring. “Thus I have laid the sorrows of my soul before you, and beseech you, that, with the candour and benignity, which are natural to you, you would look upon my child, and without revealing my secret to your son, influence him to be mild with her, in her present situation more especially; and this I am confident will engage her gratitude, though I dare not promise if will gain her love.