I am sorry, my dear Madam, you should know so little of my heart, as to suppose it possible I could have broke my engagements with Sir George from any motive but the full conviction of my wanting that tender affection for him, and that lively taste for his conversation, which alone could have ensured either his felicity or my own; happy is it for both that I discovered this before it was too late: it was a very unpleasing circumstance, even under an intention only of marrying him, to find my friendship stronger for another; what then would it have been under the most sacred of all engagements, that of marriage? What wretchedness would have been the portion of both, had timidity, decorum, or false honor, carried me, with this partiality in my heart, to fulfill those views, entered into from compliance to my family, and continued from a false idea of propriety, and weak fear of the censures of the world? The same reason therefore still subsisting, nay being every moment stronger, from a fuller conviction of the merit of him my heart prefers, in spite of me, to Sir George, our union is more impossible than ever. I am however obliged to you, and Major Melmoth, for your zeal to serve me, though you must permit me to call it a mistaken one; and to Sir George, for a concession which I own I should not have made in his situation, and which I can only suppose the effect of Major Melmoth's persuasions, which he might suppose were known to me, and an imagination that my sentiments for him were changed: assure him of my esteem, though love is not in my power. As Colonel Rivers never gave me the remotest reason to suppose him more than my friend, I have not the least right to disapprove his marrying: on the contrary, as his friend, I _ought_ to wish a connexion which I am told is greatly to his advantage. To prevent all future importunity, painful to me, and, all circumstances considered, degrading to Sir George, whose honor is very dear to me, though I am obliged to refuse him that hand which he surely cannot wish to receive without my heart, I am compelled to say, that, without an idea of ever being united to Colonel Rivers, I will never marry any other man. Were I never again to behold him, were he even the husband of another, my tenderness, a tenderness as innocent as it is lively, would never cease: nor would I give up the refined delight of loving him, independently of any hope of being beloved, for any advantage in the power of fortune to bestow. These being my sentiments, sentiments which no time can alter, they cannot be too soon known to Sir George: I would not one hour keep him in suspence in a point, which this step seems to say is of consequence to his happiness. Tell him, I entreat him to forget me, and to come into views which will make his mother, and I have no doubt himself, happier than a marriage with a woman whose chief merit is that very sincerity of heart which obliges her to refuse him.