* * * * * I believe, Montgomery, it is necessary that I say something more to you. The above conclusion is abrupt and harsh. That I feel inclined to treat you thus is the consequence of my own folly, rather than your deservings of me. Let it pass then. I wish you no ill, but as I told you before, I am become the tool of every changing impulse. I sympathize in your change of fortune; or rather, I feel a concern that you should colour with such darkened hues, so unimportant a circumstance. I too have counted upon heirship. But let my uncle the nabob put five hundred pound in my pocket, and set me down in London, Petersburg, or Pekin, and if I did not walk my own pace through the world, let me die like a dog, and have no better burial. Five hundred pound! 'Tis a mine. Ah, sigh not to be foremost of the throng! Independence, peace, and self approving reflection may be, if you will, the companions of your new destiny. Certainly Mr. Valmont managed his plan of making you a Hermit with wonderful ingenuity, to send you forth from your cave at that very age when the fancy runs gadding after novelty, and shadow passes for substance. He decked you too with the trappings of wealth, and expected every man to appear before you, with a label written on his forehead, of his souls most secret vice.--He had better have driven you out to beg with an empty wallet, and then perhaps when one had said--_Go work_--another had hinted--_Go steal_--and a third had passed you and said nothing, you might possibly have returned to a leopard's skin, and a hut of branches, the man after Mr. Valmont's own heart. Be wiser and happier, Montgomery, than this man has been; shun his weaknesses and your own; you also have your portion of weaknesses follies, vices. Yes Montgomery the latter word is not too harsh, or I should not have had now to pity you for being duped by the contemptible Janetta L----. Other instances there are for me to cite: They press upon my feelings--they wound--they torture me! * * * * * Judge for yourself, Montgomery, upon the right and wrong of your conduct and intentions. I am ill fitted to become your adviser. How could you so far mistake my character as to suppose I was the seducer of Seymour's mistress: I think one of your letters asserted so much. If to persuade a deceived girl to quit her profligate companion (I will not say lover, I should disgrace the name) and return to console the latter days of an aged grandmother be seduction, I am guilty. This I did to Seymour, and his invectives or the rumours he may spread are as unimportant and as little troublesome to my repose as the insects that are buzzing around me. Montgomery, no more of your phrases, nor his accusations. Be assured I am neither your _soul-less_ marble, nor Seymour's _libertine_.