[January 14, 1773.] IF you knew, Draper, with what anguish I accosted you at present, I think, and cannot help thinking it, that the severity of justice should give place to the sentiment of compassion, in a farewell letter—I will not recriminate—I would even be all in fault, if that might serve to alleviate the disgrace inflicted on my husband, by my elopement from him, but, Draper, be candid, I beseech you, as you sometimes can be, when it makes against yourself to be so, and then think, if you have not a great deal to reproach yourself for, in this late affair—if you can say you have not, I must, I fear, be miserable, as my sole prospect of happiness is derived from the idea that your own consciousness will befriend me in this particular instance, and if it does, let it operate so as to prevent your pursuing me in a vindictive manner. I speak in the singular number, because I would not wound you by the mention of a name that I know must be displeasing to you; but, Draper, believe me for once, when I solemnly assure you, that it is you only who have driven me to serious Extremities. But from the conversation on Monday last he had nothing to hope, or you to fear. Lost to reputation, and all hopes of living with my dearest girl on peaceable or creditable terms, urged by a despair of gaining any one point with you, and resenting, strongly resenting, I own it your avowed preference of Leeds to myself, I _myself_ Proposed the scheme of leaving you thus abruptly. Forgive me, Draper, if its accomplishment has excited anguish; but if pride is only wounded by the measure, sacrifice that I beseech you to the sentiment of humanity, as indeed you may, and may be amply revenged in the compunction I shall feel to the hour of my death, for a conduct that will so utterly disgrace me with all I love, and do not let this confirm the prejudice imbibed by Leeds’s tale, as I swear to you _that was false_, though my present mode of acting may rather seem the consequence of it than of a more recent event. Oh! that prejudice had not been deaf to the reasonable requests of a wounded spirit, or that you, Draper could have read my very soul, as undisguisedly, as sensibility and innocence must ever wish to be read! But this is, too, like recrimination which I would wish to avoid. I can only say in my justification, Draper, that if you imagine I plume myself on the Success of my scheme, you do me a great wrong. My heart bleeds for what I suppose may possibly be the sufferings of yours, though too surely had you loved, all this could never have been. My head is too much disturbed to write with any degree of connection. No matter, for if your own mind does not suggest palliatives, all I can say will be of little avail.