University of Virginia Library

To George Mordaunt, Esq;
June 13th.

I Have just received a letter which makes me the most unhappy of mankind: 'tis from a lady whose fortune is greatly above my most sanguine hopes, and whose merit and tenderness deserve that heart which I feel is not in my power to give her. The general complacency of my behaviour to the lovely sex, and my having been accidentally her partner at two or three balls, has deceived her into an opinion that she is beloved by me; and she imagines she is only returning a passion, which her superiority of fortune has prevented my declaring. How much is she to be pitied! my heart knows too well the pangs of disappointed love, not to feel most tenderly for the sufferings of another, without the additional motive to compassion of being the undesigned cause of those sufferings, the severest of

which human nature is capable. I am embarrassed to the greatest degree, not what resolution to take; that required not a moment's deliberation; but how to soften the stroke, and in what manner, without wounding her delicacy, to decline an offer, which she has not the least doubt of my accepting with all the eager transport of timid love, surprised by unexpected success.

I have wrote to her, and think I shall send this answer; I enclose you a copy of it: her letter is already destroyed: her name I conceal. The honor of a lady is too sacred to be trusted, even to the faithful breath of a friend.