My dear Lady,

Now I will proceed with my former Subject; and with the greater Pleasure, as what follows makes still more in favour of the Countess's Character, than what went before, altho’ that set it in a better Light, than it had once appeared to me in. I began, as follows:

Will you be pleased, Sir, to favour me with the Continuation of our last Subject? I will, my Dear. You left off, Sir, with acquitting me (as knowing what I knew) for breaking out into that Flood of Tears, which occasioned your abrupt Departure. But, dear Sir, will you be pleased to satisfy me about that affecting Information, of your Intention and my Lady’s, to live at Tunbridge together?

’Tis absolutely Malice and Falshood. Our Intimacy had not proceeded so far; and, thoughtless as my Sister's Letters suppose the Lady, she would have spurn’d at such a Proposition, I dare say.

Well, but then, Sir, as to the Expression to her Uncle, that she had rather have been a certain Gentleman's second Wife?

I believe, she might say something like it in Passion to him: He had been teizing her (from the time that I held an Argument in favour of that foolish Topick Polygamy, in his Company, and his Niece’s, and in that of her Sister and the Viscount) with Cautions against conversing with a Man, who, having, as he was pleased to say behind my Back, marry’d beneath him, wanted to ingage the Affections of a Lady of Birth, in order to recover, by doubling the Fault upon her, the Reputation he had lost.

She despis’d his Insinuation enough to answer him, That she thought my Arguments in Behalf of Polygamy were convincing. This set him a raving, and he threw some coarse Reflections upon her, which could not be repeated, if one may guess at them, by her being incapable to tell me what they were; and then, to vex him more, and to revenge herself, she said something like what was reported: And this was Handle enough for her Uncle, who took care to propagate it with an Indiscretion peculiar to himself; for I heard of it in three different Companies, before I knew any thing of it from herself; and when I did, it was so repeated, as you, my Dear, would hardly have censur’d her for it, the Provocation consider’d.