I received your letters, as soon as I arrived here; you cannot doubt, my dear Henrietta, of the sincere pleasure I felt in reading them. Every moment of my life, your friendship has been dear to me: For a long time my heart was satisfied with it: How happy was I then! If my soul is now possessed, too feelingly possessed, by less voluntary, and more tumultuous sentiments, believe me, they have not weakened that tender and solid affection, which attaches me to you: The amiable qualities, which gave birth to this friendship, owe nothing to illusion; nor can either time or absence destroy it!

My firmness astonishes you. Ah! my good God! This effort, which you admire, would, if I was able to examine it without passion, lose much of the value we both set upon it. What is it that I sacrifice? Of what good do I deprive myself? Of the sweetness, perhaps, of being again deceived! But can I abandon myself to this pleasure, when I have lost that of deceiving myself?

You bid me pardon my Lord Ossory, or think no more of him. Pardon him? Ah! never! think no more of him! I think of him certainly as little as I can; I no longer think of him with pleasure: I no longer think of him with regret; – I think of him. – Alas! my dear! Because it is impossible for me not to think of him. Remembrance will not leave us; we fancy we lose it in the world, but a moment of solitude restores all its force, which dissipation seemed to have taken away. When alone, that idea, once so dear to me, is ever present to my imagination; I see again that form. – believed, animated that ungrateful man, embellish all his features! What a perfect creature did it offer to my eyes! Ah! why, why has it torn away the amiable veil which hid his vices, and his falshood, from me? – So much candor in that countenance, and so much perfidy, so much ingratitude, in that heart! Oh! that he is not as noble, as generous as I believed him?