Perhaps it is paid already. Let me hear from you without delay;
I am impatient for a thousand particulars. Remember how few minutes I was at Randalls, and in how bewildered, how mad a state: and I am not much better yet; still insane either from happiness or misery. When I think of the kindness and favour I have met with, of her excellence and patience, and my uncle's generosity, I am mad with joy: but when I recollect all the uneasiness I occasioned her, and how little I deserve to be forgiven, I am mad with anger.
If I could but see her again!-But I must not propose it yet.
My uncle has been too good for me to encroach.-I must still add to this long letter. You have not heard all that you ought to hear.
I could not give any connected detail yesterday; but the suddenness, and, in one light, the unseasonableness with which the affair burst out, needs explanation; for though the event of the 26th ult., as you will conclude, immediately opened to me the happiest prospects, I should not have presumed on such early measures, but from the very particular circumstances, which left me not an hour to lose.
I should myself have shrunk from any thing so hasty, and she would have felt every scruple of mine with multiplied strength and refinement.-But I had no choice. The hasty engagement she had entered into with that woman-Here, my dear madam, I was obliged to leave off abruptly, to recollect and compose myself.-I have been walking over the country, and am now, I hope, rational enough to make the rest of my letter what it ought to be.-It is, in fact, a most mortifying retrospect for me. I behaved shamefully. And here I can admit, that my manners to Miss W., in being unpleasant to Miss F., were highly blameable.
She disapproved them, which ought to have been enough.-My plea of concealing the truth she did not think sufficient.-She was displeased;
I thought unreasonably so: I thought her, on a thousand occasions, unnecessarily scrupulous and cautious: I thought her even cold.
But she was always right. If I had followed her judgment, and subdued my spirits to the level of what she deemed proper, I should have escaped the greatest unhappiness I have ever known.-We quarrelled.-Do you remember the morning spent at Donwell?-There every little dissatisfaction that had occurred before came to a crisis. I was late;
I met her walking home by herself, and wanted to walk with her, but she would not suffer it. She absolutely refused to allow me, which I then thought most unreasonable. Now, however, I see nothing in it but a very natural and consistent degree of discretion.